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kichimiangra · 1 year ago

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Tell me more about "Daddy I'm a Zombie"?

Oh. FUCKING. BOI. Don't get me started on Daddy I'm a Zombie!

...

Anyway we'll start with this google doc I wrote like ten million years ago when I was Spurgburgering out over this and decided to rewatch the movie and write down what happens in every single scene:

(It's not written in a format to explain shit to people who didn't see the movie though)

and THEN I bitch!

Now that that's done and out of the way, this film has a very interesting concept... or at least interesting to ME! It's effectively "The Wizard of Oz" but with Zombies. Now this is also probably just a me-problem, but I feel like the most satysfying structure to a wizard of oz style story is like so: -Protagonist has an issue in their mundane life

-gets isekai'd to a fantastical world and meets fantastical counterparts to those in their mundane life

-by helping those in the fantasy world the protag recontextualizes their mundane problem and gains the insight of how to solve it before returning to their mundane world (Often in a "It was all a dream" ending)

This film kind of does this. We have Dixie having the worst day of her life i guess before a tree branch bashes her head in and kills her, waking her in the fantastical Zombie world. Most of the people she meets along the way are clearly expy's of people from her mundane life;

In life her friend Julia friend breaks up with her and is dating the red headed boy (Ray) that Dixie had a crush on, while in death she has Isis who wants nothing more to be her friend like a touch starved golden retriever and also doesn't get along with the red headed Gonner who romantically adores Dixie, thus making 0% chance of stealing him from her.

Piroshka is clearly multiple characters, including Dixie's bullies and possibly her unseen step sister with the way Nebulosa adores her(?)

Vitirol the Wandering Zombie uses the same character model (And I think voice? At least in english I think) as her father and his Hippie aesthetic aligns with her view of her father as a passive hippie.

One of the only things we know about Dixies mother is she loves her plants, especially her Bonsai trees and Nebulosa is first introduced pruning a Bonsai tree. etc.

And when she finishes her adventure and gets back home her problems get better via (?)The lesson she learned on the adventure(?)

Nebulosa and the stories moral is easily two of the biggest issues I have in this film.

The recurring moral of the story is "You get back what you put out, like a magnet" which is basically a different way of saying "What goes around comes around". That is to say the moral that Dixie must learn to solve all of her mundane life problems is to put out positive vibes and your friend will refriend you, your bullies will stop bullying you, you parents divorce will... I dunno stop the bad vibing? But this moral is rather disconnected to the Zombie world plot. Even worse so using that moral insists that Dixie herself is her own worst enemy, and the narrative seems to confirm that as by the end of the film she stops being a miserable twat and in the sequel we see that things have really turned around for Dixie, even befriending her bullies, having other friends, making up with Julia and befriending Ray, has a better relationship to her parents, and is even running for class president! All in all changing her mood and outlook DID solve her mundane life problems!

The issue with this though is that her opponent in the Zombie world, the hurdle she has to overcome to get home and back to her life is Nebulosa, the character clearly coded as her mother. Her realtionship to her mother in the first film is strained but mostly exists as floating ideas. Her mother is the one who gave her the films magguffin; the Azoth, though it never explains where SHE got it but this connection to her mother seems to be important as it was the last gift she got from her before her parents divorced. Near the beginning of the film she is supposed to be visiting her mother but shows disdain for the idea, and finally at the end of the film she seems to have gotten over it as her mom picks her up from school and she smiles getting into the car saying "Hi Mommy" with a cheerful tone. What ever issue she has with her mother is solved but I don't really know what that issue is or why Nebulosa represents her mother when she spends the early part of the film interacting and blaming her father for her shitty life, meanwhile her father is treated as the force of good, the Wizard if you would, within the fantastical world.

The plot about Dixie's Primary issue should be her strained relationship with her mother if Nebs is to be the mother's counterpart, while if we want the moral to be "Dixie is her own worst enemy, sabotaging herself with her bad attitude about literally everything, then the opponent Dixie should have to face is Dixie herself, as such Nebs should be Dixies own counterpart instead.

A lot of this film also feels like it's just putzing around with talking head scenes while trying to get to that confrontation. Unfortuantely Dixie and Nebs are just... completely disconnected in the story. Nebs and Dixie don't even come face to face until the final confrontation. In fact after her last scene in the first graveyard Piroshka doesn't interact with the heroes either aside from Gonner, and later Dixie just one time. It often feels like there's no Hero-Villain synergy there aside from Nebs telling her minions to bring her the Azoth, and Dixie having that.

On top of THAT Nebs evil plan is just... the worst. She is colelcting all the Zombies in the Zombie world to brainwash them and then use the Azoth to open a portal to send them back and just... spread her evil. We don't know why

Wouldn't it have been a more satisfying ending should Dixie use the Azoth's power to open a portal, only for her and Nebs to get sucked in together. The portal takes them to the point where Nebs died, perhaps she died a cruel unfair death that she herself caused allowing Dixie to tell herself the moral to Nebs, that she was her own worst enemy and had she just done xyz her life wouldn't have been shit and lead to a shit death. She gets through to Nebs and the old bitch steps out of the portal,s safe zone stepping back into her life before she died to try and correct the results. Dixie is sucked back out into the void and then wakes up back to her own life and chooses to follow the advice she gave Nebs, and then among the people she researched from her 'dream' she also see's that Nebulosa managed to turn her life around before dying with no regrets, as such no longer returning to the limbo that is the Zombie world.

Wouldn't that be better than just Nuking the bitch?

Also there's a SEQUEL film and Nebs is at least a little more active as a villain but still how the fuck did she survive getting nuked????

Some of the world building loses me as well. The zombie world seems to be a different world itself but Isis is afraid of the farmhouse because there might be mortal humans there but... this can't be just... zombies hiding among the normal mundane world because of the big plot point of finding Vitriol by the old Egyptian cemetery. Are there just Egyptian cemeteries in Spain??? And also Zombies just chilling around? And Also Neb's evil lair is the fairgrounds from the beginning of the film but the surroundings look different so this has to be the ZOMBIE WORLD counterpart of the fair right??

Now I'm gonna rant about Gonner

Gonner had a lot of potential to be the roguish love interest. He's a cool pirate, he has a backstory where he didn't want to be a pirate, but a poet instead, he's got some anithero vibes because he secretly works for Nebs so that has a lot of delicious "OH NO THE BETRAYAL!" dramapotential but like.... He's such a little bastard. I think that him stealing the Azoth from Dixie and giving it to Nebs because technically that would keep Dixie safe is a good drama mindset but then when his girlfriend is chasing him around with her axe and trying to kill him for cheating on her and wants to know why he just says "Eh, she's hotter than you." and that's it. No better person or shit like that? Petty little bastard. This is then made worse in the sequel in the most egregious way. When Dixie seemingly might be grabbing herself up a human boyfriend he feels betrayed and returns to his ex, Piroshka who is just fucking super forgiving considering her got her killed in the last film and I'm okay with this this is perfect setup for SOME KIND of drama! Either Dixie realizes she pushed Gonner away and the yummy drama fills the belly OR Gonner realizes he made a mistake and tries to return to Dixie's side but is caught by Nebs and is now a hostage! TWO POTENTIAL ROUTES FOR DRAMA! The film does neither of them he just walks over back to Dixie's side like "sup?" Dixie literally didn't even know he switched sides like wtf you had the perfect drama setup and you fucking wasted but literally doing nothing with it!

The sad part is the worldbuilding is also bland and a LOT of the scenes are just talking head exposition scenes, some of them jumping rapidly between team Dixie and Team Nebs while the two never really cross. It actually can be an exhausting watch because Oh look they're walking and talking again. A lot of tell, not show and that makes me mad because the concept of Wizard of Oz but with colorful Zombies sounds so good it's like my jam but the Story is so unfocused and disjointed that it feels like it was passed back and forth between two writers who wanted to write different things and ignored what the other wrote and then sent it to the animators so any concepts brought up just don't get pushed far at freaking all!

And that's it for my rant. I literally ocd'd over this film just not doing anything with the tools it had while being a concept I enjoyed that I started YEARS AGO on and off of an "Original the character" fix it fic story where I just take the concept and work from there but that's off in the void until it figures out what it wants to be when it grows up

#kc rambles #kc answers stuff #Daddy I'm a zombie #daddy im a zombie

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