Doghouse

Title - Doghouse
Language - English
Genre - Horror, comedy, Zombie

Vince is about to get divorced so his friends decide to to take him out for a lads weekend away.  They arrange to go to the  to the small village of Moodley where the women are supposed to outnumber the  men 4 to 1.  When they reach Moodley it’s surprisingly quiet, all the shops are closed except for the pub so the group split up, Mikey goes to get the key to his nan's house, where they are planning on staying and Matt is sent to get the mini bus driver, who is the only female of the group.

As Mikey walks through the village we see how empty it is, there are hand prints on some of the windows and a couple of bloody hand prints on some walls.  On his way back from getting the key Mikey passes a garden where he hears a strange noise and, when he looks he sees a woman in a wedding dress eating a dog.  

As the only sign of life in the pub is someone in the toilet who is being sick the rest of the guys go to see if they can find out what is taking Matt so long.  They find him looking in the window of a magic shop when a homeless looking woman walks around the corner. As the group are checking the pockets for any change to give her a man dressed in army combats runs around the corner and attacks her.  The group try to get the man off her but her hood falls down revealing a dead looking face, she attacks Neil putting a knife through his hand but she is stopped by Mikey, who arrives on the scene after running away from the bride, he hits the homeless woman over the head with a garden gnome, knocking her to the ground.  As they back away and try to assess the situation the bride comes round the corner and is quickly joined by by other female zombies from the local shops.  The group of friends make it back to Mikey’s Nan's house but now they have to make out of Moodley alive.

Doghouse is a good horror comedy and is surprisingly different.  Vince and his friends are a regular group of ‘blokes’ with a slightly misogynistic outlook on life (Neil is always saying that women find him irresistible) and a lot of the time they come off looking stupid.  The all female zombie cast aren't your normal brain eating zombies, in fact there is a conversation at the beginning of the film before the cast get to Moodley which could be used to argue that they are not zombies but some other type of  ghoul drawing parallels to the deadites from the Evil Dead films.  Although the Zombies do eat their victims it is not all they are interested in, one captures Neil and, although she is slowly trying to eat him she also wants his company.  They are also more intelligent than alot of other movie Zombies and many use weapons with one even using an axe chop down a post that supports the hiding place of one of the group.

Dog house is a film which, at points looks like it is going to make it’s male protagonists realise that they are wrong in their views of women, even making some of them get in touch with the female side by having to dress (drag) up to get past the zombies, but instead of them changing their views it just becomes another reason to joke around.

The Costumes and style of doghouse are quite striking partly thanks to Dan Schaffer’s  influence (writer of the comic Dogwitch).

Dog house is an entertaining film with a good amount of laughs gore.