Night of Something Strange (2016)

Directed by: Jonathan Straiton | 94 minutes | comedy, horror | Actors: Trey Harrison, Rebecca C. Kasek, Wayne W. Johnson, Michael Merchant, Toni Ann Gambale, Nicola Fiore, John Walsh, Janet Mayson, Tarrence Taylor, Kera O’Bryon, Wes Reid, Billy Garberina, Al Lawler, Kirk LaSalle , David Meadows

Five friends are heading to a lake for a relaxing vacation. However, the fun soon wears off when Carrie catches an STD during a bathroom break. When they decide to stop at a motel and spend the night, all hell breaks loose. The STI that Carrie has among the members turns everyone who is infected into a living dead. But it turns out there are even more sinister things going on at the motel.

Because zombie films often tend to follow a fixed and tried-and-tested pattern, they usually don’t excel in surprise or originality. In ‘Night of Something Strange’, director and lead writer Jonathan Straiton does his best to color outside the lines and give the zombie genre a distinct twist. It took a while for the troubled production to finally see the light of day. The script had been on the shelves since 2009, but the movie audience had to wait until 2016 for the final product.

The result of all those years of hard work is an entertaining genre film with a rather curious approach. Where zombies normally adore human flesh and spread their disease by biting people, the undead creatures in ‘Night of Something Strange’ are lusty sex maniacs who infect people through a heavy lovemaking. This results in a series of scenes that are as hilarious as they are disastrous, in which the hideous nymphomaniacs eagerly indulge their carnal urges on a whole host of unsuspecting teenagers. Although squirting fountains of blood and functional nudes are not missing, ‘Night of Something Strange’ is not an extremely dirty film that is only reserved for die-hard horror adepts, partly due to a heavy dose of joviality. Despite the modest budget, the makeup artists have done a good job painting the zombie creeps.

Although the corniness sometimes gets the upper hand, ‘Night of Something Strange’ is quite a decent horror comedy in all its unpretentiousness. It is typically one of those films from the ‘so bad it’s almost right’ category. It cannot therefore be ruled out that this print will eventually acquire a modest cult status.