Unlike Natty Knocks which kinda sorta felt like a tween RL Stine movie (only rated R), Zombie Town on Hulu is actually an RL Stine movie. I hit play knowing it probably wasn’t gonna be my speed.

The flick is about a small town devoted to the zombie films of Len Carver, a thinly veiled amalgam of John Carpenter and George Romero. He has retired from filmmaking but has returned with a surprise film… which turns people into “real” monsters (ahh).

This is about as much a zombie film as a My Little Pony movie. It’s as scary as a chinchilla and edgy as a beach ball. It’s a kiddie movie for kiddies but, I reasoned, the recent Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark movies weren’t bad…

When the movie starts, it was a little bit interesting, a little bit fun. Dan Aykroyd plays the director and, sure, he’s phoning it in and there’s about a 50% chance he believes all this is real anyway (so it’s a public service!). I kind of liked the two lead teen actors and some of the other adult actors are fun.

But as the movie putters along, a switch is flicked and the plot and dialog get real dumb. The fun-adjacent energy dries up and the whole zombie predicament resolves in the most braindead way possible. I guess kids might be surprised, but anyone over the age of ten would just shrug and say “derp”.

This flick had potential. But it couldn’t maintain the limited energy it started with, has dreadful dialog and plotting, and a real dumb ending. Probably exactly what you would expect from an RL Stine movie.

Score: 67