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Antisocial

I made a rookie mistake today. I started watching a movie based on the title.
In case you have never made this mistake yourself, allow me to protect you from your future self's stupid choice: NO MOVIE YOU CHOOSE TO WATCH BASED ON THE TITLE WILL EVER BE A GOOD LIFE DECISION!

Good. Now you've been warned.

So, I may have picked Antisocial out of my abundant Netflix choices because I was bored. And I may have done it because I, myself, am fairly antisocial. Or perhaps the most likely of all, I picked it because it immediately got me singing Anthrax. Whatever the ill-conceived logic was behind this idiotic choice - I'm actually apologizing to myself for this one.

When a person like me, who adds movies to her Netflix queue because they have the fewest stars, tells you that a movie is an immense pile of crap, you can rest assured that the movie in question is better forgotten than watched.

Another quick side rant before I get into the details of the movie: I am so damn tired of zombie movies.  Yet again, unbeknownst to me, I started watching a fucking zombie movie. Seriously. This is what I get for picking movies based on titles  and not movie descriptions.

Part of the new breed of zombie movie (reminding me of Contracted and The Signal all mixed up with Pulse and Doghouse) - Antisocial is about a bunch of college-aged kids on New Year's Eve who become "infected" with some kind of madness that turns them into irrational, delusional, bleeding killers. I may not have been paying close attention BUT, I don't really recall anyone every using the word zombie anywhere in the movie.

The infection is spread through (get ready for this one) social media. In a not-surprising-to-anyone "twist" ending, the "infection" was created by the social media company's owner as a marketing ploy to increase user activity. The intention was to send subliminal messages through the site that would COMPEL users to post more pictures! Somehow that "compulsive instinct" to post your selfies all over the internet "mutated" into a need to kill. Out goes the Twinkie defense and in walks the "Facebook made me do it" argument.

If you can't feel the heavy-handed social commentary looming in this one, you're either too young or too dumb.

Unsurprisingly, Antisocial brings NOTHING new to the table. It served up the typical, paranoid scenarios that accompany any "mysterious disaster turned monster movie." It provided us the absolutely standard "survivors take refuge in a place that becomes their tomb" set up. It gave us members of the group fighting amongst themselves as they fear one of their own has become infected. There's the turning away of outsiders, begging for help. Every checkbox on the list of things needed to make a zombie movie got checked along the way.

At least I can give them this: the effects weren't terrible and the broad who lives to the end is pretty enough to make for a great movie poster.

Waste 2 minutes of your life and watch the trailer here:


Throw the horns and listen to Anthrax here:
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