Yummy is in Berlin cinemas now. Photo: Busch Media Group
Lars Damoiseaux’s new horror film wastes no time in sleazily pushing the boundaries of good taste.
Belgian horror-comedy Yummy flaunts the catchy, reeks-of-taste tagline: “Facelifts, boob jobs and zombies.” It has the benefit of not wrongfooting the audience – what you get is written on the tin, and if you’re not in the mood for a crassly exploitative Troma-throwback, don’t bother. If, on the other hand, that does sound like your jam, then waste no time in booking a ticket for Lars Damoiseaux’s ridiculous splatterfest, which sees Alison (Maaike Neuville) travel to a shady Eastern European hospital for plastic surgery, accompanied by her boyfriend and her mum. There, her clumsy beau unwittingly unleashes a zombie virus when he helps a victim of an experimental rejuvenation treatment.
The humour throughout is significantly more miss than hit, and it never equals the heights of some of its influences, chiefly Shaun of the Dead and Planet Terror. Still, Damoiseaux’s stylistically muddled B-movie wastes no time in sleazily pushing the boundaries of good taste and it achieves what it sets out to accomplish: keep gorehounds up to their ears in buckets of blood and leaving them dizzy from the stupid. So, job well done then.
Yummy / Directed by Lars Damoiseaux (Belgium, 2019), with Maaike Neuville, Bart Hollanders, Benjamin Ramon, Clara Cleymans. Starts July 23.