MexZombies – TADFF 2022

A group of teenagers try to save their neighbourhood from the zombie apocalypse in MexZombies. Tavo (Iñaki Godoy) is a Mexican teenager who sneaks into a gated community to both spy on his crush Ana (Roberta Damián) and hang out with his cinephile best friend Joseph, aka Cronos (Marcelo Barcelo). However, some inept gangsters test out an experimental drug on Don Segis (Diego Jáuregui), resulting in his awakening as a zombie. Soon the entire community is swarming with zombies, and Tavo, Cronos, and Ana join up with fellow friend Rex (Luciana Vale) and her American friend Johnny (Vincent Michael Webb) to try and save the neighbourhood.

MexZombies is a Mexican zombie teen comedy directed by Chava Cartas. As a dark-skinned Mexican, protagonist Tavo is a bit of an outcast and the only one of his friends living outside the gated community. When zombies attack, Tavo and his best friend Cronos, nicknamed after Guillermo del Doro's film, set it upon themselves to save Tavo's crush Ana and the rest of their friends, who seek the assistance of local narcos Jefe Vargas (Bárbara de Regil), whose underlings were inadvertently responsible for starting the zombie apocalypse in the first place.

MexZombies is a cute mix of teen comedy and zombie horror, with a young cast that is quite knowledgeable of the zombie films that came before, with Cronos, in particular, spending the film dressed as Woody Harrelson's character of Tallahassee from Zombieland. MexZombies features several satisfying zombie kills, often slowed down for more significant effects. While I do have to shake my head at MexZombies for, at one point, breaking the “don't kill dogs” rule in a very gory fashion, I am not holding it against the film since, as a whole, MexZombies is incredibly entertaining. Oh, and keep an eye out for a scene featuring the perfect use of “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew.

Trailer for MexZombies – TADFF 2022