If you've ever heard of the phrase, "lets throw everything and the kitchen sink at it" then you probably got the joke at the end of Evil Dead 2 where Sam Raimi literally threw the kitchen sink at Bruce Campbell. Writer Oren Uziel thought he'd take the phrase, "Kitchen Sink" and use that in horror terms of crafting a film that features zombies, vampires and humans fighting aliens. This idea of course being bonkers awesome went on the Hollywood blacklist for best unmade script for quite some time until interestingly enough Jonah Hill decided he wanted to make this his directorial debut after working with Uziel who penned the script for 22 Jump Street. Of course as all good things tend to do, this idea fell apart until relatively new director Robbie Pickering helmed the project under its new name Freaks of Nature with Jonah Hill attached as executive producer. Hill as producer gives you copious amounts of stars to jump on board your film. There is no shortage of cameos in this flick from beginning to end. 
In the town of Dilford, famously known for its invention of the Riblet there is a coexistence of vampires, humans and zombies. The zombies are kept collared in public and shocked if the urge to feed arises and are fed rations of brains in an internment camp they are kept in when not commuting. Vampires have specialized sunscreen to protect them from the sun's harmful rays and you can buy blood drinks at any market store. Dag is a young man on the baseball team pining for a girl way out of his league, Ned is the smartest geek in school who is constantly harassed by jerk kids, vampires and even his parents and Petra is in love with a twilight looking vampire named Milan who is taking her to her first vampire party. Petra is tricked by Milan and turned into a Vampire while Ned not wanting to deal with his bad home life decides to let a zombie girl bite him because she was the only one nice to him. Then all of a sudden a giant alien ship shows up hovering over the town. In a panic the vampires blame the humans, the humans blame the vampires and the zombies are pissed because no one brought them their brain rations. Utter chaos ensues as all three factions begin killing each other until the alien ship finally opens and begins abducting people. Zombie Ned, Vampire Petra and Dag are forced into hiding together as they try to come to terms with the way they treated each other in school and how to interact with each other being from different walks of life, eventually banning together to save the town from the alien threat! 
Oh my god there's a ton of stuff going on in this movie! Vampire teacher Keegan Michael Key is hilarious, Dennis Leary is the biggest richest asshole who owns the Riblet factory that may be the key to saving everyone, Anne from Arrested Development is the zombie girl that bites Ned and her parents are played by Scuz and Tina from Return of the Living Dead! The head alien that our heroes eventually face? Let's just say an Oscar winning director/actor plays him in one of the most what the hell is going on moments ever. Nicholas Braun from Red State plays Dag as a loveable idiot who just can't get anything together or get the hint that Vanessa Hudgen's Lorelei, who he is crushing on, is only using him to store weed at his house. Josh Fadam from Key and Peele as well as Funny or Die as Ned might be my favorite character as he just has the shit end of the stick. His brother is the school jock and his dad is pretty ready to throw Ned's entire life away to take care of his jock brother not to mention the fact that he gets beat up by jackass twilight vampires at school. You super love and feel for him and can't help but cheer him on as he leads the zombie community in retaliation to the humans for treating them like crap. Mackenzie Davis who is in talks to play Domino in Deadpool 2 plays Petra so much like a John Hughes Molly Ringwald character who once is scorned goes on a blood fueled revenge spree mercilessly taking the people who wronged her out like a badass. If the Twilight movies had a character like her I'd see them in an instant because she's probably tear all those lame ass vampires to shreds. 
There was no money spared by Sony on the gore, makeup fx and pretty damn good looking CGI. This easily could've been a sci-fi Chanel original movie bad looking film but not only do all the FX look nice each different creature represented is given its own rules. The zombies are like very old school zombies hungering for Brains and not just flesh but the funny thing is the less brains they eat the smarter they get as brains to them are like a drug high that makes them idiotic. This plays heavy into Dag and Petra trying to get Ned off the brains as he is the smartest person in town and their only hope. The vampires are given the most care as they evolve from jokingly twilight vampires when seducing people to full on 30 Days of Night monsters that scream, fly and brutally massacre their prey! When Petra makes her first kill her eyes get a black lens that goes over them making her eyes seem soulless! My favorite thing though is how they are dispatched. In a scene where a neighbor, who had trained all his life for the eventual vampire uprising, takes steaks and begins puncturing vampires hearts karate kid style they explode in a giant release of blood that drenches Dag and Lorelei! The aliens have giant mech suits that go around abducting people with tentacles but at the end of the movie we get to see what they really look like and for a moment we get a closeup practical FX shot of them that looks something a bit like a combo of the aliens from James Cameron's Abyss and an Adipose from Dr. Who. There is one more creature in the movie that surprises you but if you look closely at the film there are several foreshadowing moments to it! 
With all the insanity and chaos in the film I was pretty happy there's a pretty cool little message and a lot of heart to the film. The aliens even make fun of the fact that upon their arrival all the different races in the town immediately turn on one another and do more damage than the aliens do honestly. It reminded me a lot of the Twilight Zone episode where the aliens mess with the electricity on a street block and the neighbors begin turning on one another. The shaky coexistence is joined together by a common enemy and it's pretty cool. Friendship plays a big part in the movie too. John Hughes high school dramedy permeates the film with a lot more overt tones of comedy. The Hughes esque moments come when Petra, Dag and Ned are alone reminiscing about their past lives as friends and how they got to where they are in very Breakfast Club like moments that the actors bring to life really well. 
Uziel I have to give the ultimate credit for crafting such an insane script with so many genre elements that tie together. Every moment seemed necessary to something in the film and you end up laughing or loving the gore moments throughout. Pickering did an amazing job reigning in all this talent on the movie and the action is intense and fun with its great cinematography. It's a shame that a movie with such talent and fun barely got a limited release because very few movies still throw the kitchen sink at you like this!
24 Days till Halloween! Halloween!
24 Days till Halloween! Silver Shamrock!
