Directed (and probably everything else) by Stephen Rock
Our final day of zombie week is here and it’s time for something spectacular. A wise person once said, “If something is worth doing well, then it’s worth doing poorly.” While obviously this doesn’t mean to just do a shit job whenever, it’s important to remember that if you want to do something and can’t do it perfectly, then just do the best you can with what you have. It is a painful lesson that I’m sure independent filmmakers know far too well, and I’m certain that Stephen Rock is no exception, because Dead Burger looks like it ran into every roadblock an indie horror movie can, but by golly, he still released it.
The story of Dead Burger begins in a small town in Upstate New York where a Voodoo priest is traveling with his entourage. After ordering some food at a local restaurant, the priest is disgusted to see that his burger has arrived with tomatoes, the one thing he specifically said not to put on due to his allergies, and he storms out to get his revenge. Gotta say, I’m with the voodoo priest on this one, food safety is no joke. In what might be the most unusual negative review ever made, the priest goes to a cemetery and raises the dead, setting them upon the town explicitly for their crimes against gastronomy. Only a plucky group of survivors stand between the town and total zombie apocalypse.
Allergies aside, the set up here is a fun combination of the old school voodoo priest who raises zombies to do his bidding and that gets conflated with the newer broad zombie apocalypse vibe. For this story that works fine as a premise, but the issue comes out that there isn’t too much story beyond that. Sure, we get lots of vignettes with characters getting attacked by zombies, some comedic gun shop commercial cutaways, but these never really gel into a plot. The bigger question is; does that matter? For Dead Burger, the answer is a resounding ‘No!’.
What makes Dead Burger charming isn’t the rich plotline or the nuanced characterization, it’s the complete earnestness of making a big scale zombie movie without having the budget to do it. From the zombie makeup to the kill scenes to the ever present severed head prop that gets frequently reused, it’s a lot of fun seeing everyone trying to take this all seriously and stay in character. Also, there’s a fantastic drinking game I would recommend everyone to play while watching this movie; drink every time you see a continuity error. Fair warning, you will get plastered, because this movie was clearly shot over a longer period of time, hair styles change, characters’ appearances change, day/night changes, even seasons change.
Here’s the thing, though, I wasn’t lying when I said this was charming. It’s a goofy exercise that came from a few people putting in a ton of work trying to get a regional horror movie made, and I can only imagine how much Stephen Rock was doing behind the scenes. Most other movies have teams of people doing stuff but Rock had to direct, do special effects work, I’m sure he was scouting locations, organizing shoots, and all the while doing that on little money. You don’t see regional indie horror as often anymore, so movies like this are worth highlighting. It’s not cynical, it’s not a cash grab, it’s just people doing everything in their power to make a movie because they wanted to. I raise my glass to you, Stephen Rock, Dead Burger is ridiculous and over the top, but I had a good time. And you could too, because this is on YouTube! For free! https://youtu.be/HUSYQxZI998?si=sI8qN-NuUuI6WUCm