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If John Waters made a zombie movie, it would probably be close in spirit to the South Jersey-based comedy The Zombie Wedding with its flamboyant colors, an assortment of heavily-satirized characters, and the strength of true love regardless of tribe or creed or crazy. Unfortunately, The Zombie Wedding is not a Waters creation, and even though the comedy and oddball personages are all there, this lightweight spoof emits more of an undead moan than a pleasurable shriek.

Title: The Zombie Wedding (2023) Director: Micah Khan Writer: Greg D’Alessandro Studio: Weekly World News Studios IMDb Plot: At the first-ever wedding between a human bride and a zombie groom, the human guests need to learn how to behave. Joe Says: This lightweight spoof emits more of an undead moan than a pleasurable shriek.

Horror, like its genre-brother scifi, plays exceptionally well when working as a metaphor. The zombie apocalypse, when not merely an excuse for a shoot-’em-up video game exercise, has become a trove of such stories. Overconsumption, climate change, the folly of big business, and even societal taboos like suicide, as shown in the 2017 streamer from Australia, Cargo, can all speculate under the wrappings of horror. Horror also has strong ties with comedy as both groups can elicit similar responses. 

The Zombie Wedding seeks to draw on these principles. As a concept, Zombie Wedding is comedically intriguing. In this tale of true love, Zack and Ashley are madly planning for their wedding, and trying to ignore their over-the-top parents, when a zombie outbreak hits Vineland, New Jersey. Zack (Donald Chang) gets bitten but instead of going all Lucio Fulci, retains his love for Ashley (Deepti Menon). The two decide to go forward with the wedding and all hell breaks loose. 

But not really. This version of hell is more like a late-nite, cable-access talk show spectacle than a trip to the Monroeville Mall with George Romero. 

Written by Greg D’Alessandro with direction by Micah Khan, The Zombie Wedding is an easygoing spoof that would most likely work well in a packed theater complete with full-on audience participation. When streaming from a living room, the movie falls flat with spotty acting and poor comedic delivery.  

The horror-comedy classic Shaun of the Dead has its epilogue showing a world where humanity and the undead moderately co-exist. The Zombie Wedding seemingly builds on this idea, but shuffles into the absurd too quickly without properly playing it straight. The groom’s mother (SNL’s Cheri Oteri) and the bride’s parents start their routine at 11 and continue their escalation into improv orbit. Similarly, Seth Gilliam’s Reverend Crump is a strange concoction of Little Richard, James Brown’s Reverend Cleophus James, and the drama coach from The Brady Bunch. The end result is overall too much without a defining, or creative, restraint. 

D’Alessandro builds on true love as his metaphor showing that love can – and should – safely transcend man-made boundaries. Love is love as the saying goes. Khan brilliantly builds his cast with all shapes, sizes, and colors to prove this thesis. Unfortunately, much of this subtlety is swallowed by the loud absurdity of the genre farce.

Zombie Wedding is presented as a run-on joke, one that both cast crew are in on, yet it is the viewer that often stumbles in the dark. Yes, The Zombie Wedding has a heart, and sometimes it even beats outside the body.