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WITNESS INFECTION (2020)

Directed by Andy Palmer.
Written by Carlos Alazraqui, Jill-Michele Melean.
Starring Carlos Alazraqui, Jill-Michele Melean, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, Robert Belushi, Bret Ernst, Erinn Hayes, Monique Coleman, Joseph D. Reitman

When a bad batch of sausage is made tainted with human meat, two warring Italian mobster families find themselves battling the undead in their New Jersey mansions. Amidst the zombie armageddon, a dog groomer named Carlo (Robert Belushi) is forced by his father to marry the daughter of a rival mob boss in order to strike a truce, but the tainted meat and the zombies are getting in the way.

Ayyyyyy, mobsters, zombies, and Jersey, the 00’s called and want their movie back? While the intentions behind this zombie mob comedy are good, this film seems about twenty years too late to feel relevant at all. Sure, when THE SOPRANOS, JERSEY SHORE, and THE WALKING DEAD were first introduced, this might have been a relevant flick. But now it reeks like last week’s cannoli.

That said, this is a capably made and occasionally amusing film made by what seems to be a bunch of actors who at least know their comic timing. I wouldn’t say the comedy is biting or fresh, but you’ll get a little belly laugh here and there if you have a fondness for the aforementioned cultural guideposts that it references heavily throughout.

WITNESS INFECTION, which despite the pun really has nothing to do with the film as no one in this movie is under witness protection, but hey, this isn’t a film that asks to be dissected because there really isn’t much there. It does get nicely gory towards the end, which I appreciated, but even down to the standoff in a bar which is a direct swipe from SHAUN OF THE DEAD, WITNESS INFECTION is a film that borrows too heavily from well known, and well worn down ideas, and adds very little to make the concepts its own.

Check out the trailer here!!