Joe Dante’s Homecoming, shown tonight on Showtime as part of their current Masters of Horror series, is a great zombie B-movie, and a wonderful little bit of agitprop about the Iraq War. When a Cindy Sheehan-like mother of a soldier dead in the War asks what her son died for, a sanctimonious White House speechwriter responds that if he had one wish, it would be that her son could come back to tell her of the importance of the cause for which he gave his life. And the speechwriter gets his wish: all the soldiers dead in the war awaken as zombies… only they’ve come back, not to bless the President’s policies, but to vote him out of office. And though all the dead soldiers want is to express their opinions through the ballot box, the situation escalates after the President wins re-election by fixing the results in Ohio and Florida…
There’s not that much, really, to say about the movie. Homecoming doesn’t go for subtlety. It is tight, direct, on the mark, and well focused in all its details. There are some good zombie scenes, and I especially enjoyed the satirical sequences involving sleazy characters who are obvious analogues of Karl Rove and Ann Coulter. It’s great that a movie like this was able to get on the air (albeit only on premium cable). It’s an emotionally satisfying revenge fantasy, a neat reversal of the propaganda that we are usually fed about the war.
Joe Dante’s Homecoming, shown tonight on Showtime as part of their current Masters of Horror series, is a great zombie B-movie, and a wonderful little bit of agitprop about the Iraq War. When a Cindy Sheehan-like mother of a soldier dead in the War asks what her son died for, a sanctimonious White House speechwriter responds that if he had one wish, it would be that her son could come back to tell her of the importance of the cause for which he gave his life. And the speechwriter gets his wish: all the soldiers dead in the war awaken as zombies… only they’ve come back, not to bless the President’s policies, but to vote him out of office. And though all the dead soldiers want is to express their opinions through the ballot box, the situation escalates after the President wins re-election by fixing the results in Ohio and Florida…
There’s not that much, really, to say about the movie. Homecoming doesn’t go for subtlety. It is tight, direct, on the mark, and well focused in all its details. There are some good zombie scenes, and I especially enjoyed the satirical sequences involving sleazy characters who are obvious analogues of Karl Rove and Ann Coulter. It’s great that a movie like this was able to get on the air (albeit only on premium cable). It’s an emotionally satisfying revenge fantasy, a neat reversal of the propaganda that we are usually fed about the war.