Movie Review: 'The World Ends at Camp Z'

World Ends at Camp Z is a low budget zombie movie that, though it may look like a horror comedy, takes its premise deathly seriously. Directed by Ding Wang, what looks like it should be a wild horror comedy quickly establishes itself as a dire waiting game as interchangeable characters are introduced, bicker in desperately unfunny fashion, and wait for zombies to show up and make a meal of them.

The World Ends at Camp Z stars Anne Carolyn Binette as Vanessa. It is, unfortunately, Vanessa’s job to travel to some R.V campsite that her boss has purchased so that she can assess it as an asset. She’s making this trip amid word that a pandemic is spreading, a potentially deadly one. Exposition radio tells us that people are being advised to shelter at home and wear masks in what passes for relevance in a movie that lacks the weight needed to make such references to real world tragedy.

At the camp, Vanessa is confronted by Julian (Dean Persons), a whiny baby-man whose Uncle owns the camp and is selling it over Julian’s whiny, baby-man objections. Julian immediately makes things awkward and confrontational with Vanessa who just wants to do her job. Julian keeps doing silly, petty little things that inconvenience and annoy her, and by extension us, even as his best friend, and the park’s manager, Clay (Osawa Muska), tells him to knock it off.

Despite the acrimony with which Julian welcomed Vanessa, it’s clear that the movie is clumsily building them as a potential love match. This is mostly because they are the young and attractive leads in a movie but also because the direction is not subtle about how they are clashing in the most obvious sitcom romance fashion. Hate quickly turns to flirting only to be interrupted by the arrival of Vanessa’s boss who also happens to be her boyfriend, Aaron (Michael Czemarys).

In order to make Aaron’s arrival less obnoxious, he arrives with three friends far more obnoxious than himself. There is Nate (James Chapman), Max (Arthur Gallant), and Andrea (Rafaela Solomao), and while the guys are loud and interchangeable, Andrea is a cringe worthy take on a modern model and influencer, a vapid character whose fate is sealed the minute she shows up. Indeed, it’s not hard to determine anyone’s fate in The World Ends at Camp Z.

Something about the aesthetic, the cheap cinematography of The World Ends at Camp Z betrays the intention the movie has to be genuinely gory and scary. The movie wants to be a serious zombie-virus movie but the look of the movie is low rent, straight out of the direct to video bins of the 1990s. It’s poignantly humorous how the actors are forced to try and play it straight while everything in the look of the movie makes them look very silly.

Was there anything I liked about The World Ends at Camp Z? In all honesty, not really. I guess I could say that I appreciated the professionalism of Osawa Muska’s performance. He’s occasionally forced into the role of dignified native American stereotype but Muska finds little ways to break out of that with his forceful personality. He’s the only character that appears capable amid the chaos and he does seem to thrive as the only real adult once the zombies arrive but this only highlights his very obvious fate, nobly sacrificing himself to save the young white protagonists.

Other than Muska, I was surprised a little bit in the final act as the movie keeps trying to sell us on the serious nature of this low rent affair. The film ends on a dire note and I won’t spoil it for those of you who love zombie movies, even bad ones. I will just say that I appreciated a little bit that the movie sticks to its downer guns in the final moments. The World Ends at Camp Z is available for streaming rental now and if you love any and all zombie movies, I guess you are the audience for this one.