Wild Eye Releasing announced this past week that F/X wizard
Torey Haas will be making the move to feature length direction with the DVD
debut on Sept. 13 of The Neon Dead.
The film played to positive buzz at various genre festivals
during the past year under the title Invasion of the Undead. Frankly, it’s a smart move to revision the
release as The Neon Dead … a few too many zombie flicks out there these
days.
Haas, who supplied F/X work for the likes of V/H/S
Viral and Transmigration, also provided the script here, which is
something of an homage to late ‘80s and
early ‘90s horror flicks, especially Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness. He goes old school with some terrific
stop-motion and puppet work, plus a plot that is more along the lines of a
supernatural thriller — with a terrific sense of humor — than your typical
zombie plague tale.
The gist of the story finds the lovely Allison (Marie Barker)
moving into a creepy old house that she has inherited and if she’s going to
hang onto the place she’s going to have to land a job.
Which brings us to the day of the big job interview and the
“thing” that she finds in her bathroom — think: Ghostbusters. She locks “it” in and heads out, only to
discover a Girl Scout at her front door, which conveniently saves her a trip
into town (seriously, you have a demon locked in the bathroom and your sending
a little tyke named Ashley, who is eerily familiar with such things, to town to
get demon hunters).
Soon Jake (Dylan Schettina) and Dedmond (Greg Garrison)
arrive and quickly deduce that poor Allison has opened some sort portal to the
realm of damned — it’s a family thing, which we only discover as the plot
unfolds. If order is to be restored,
the trio must defeat a distant relative named Drake (Nathan DeRussy), who is
now a demon that commands a voodoo army.
The Neon Dead is a cut above what one might expect from a
low-budget indie release, which is related to Haas’s F/X work, a fun script and
his cast that clearly enjoys their work.
Bonus goodies include by Wild Eye Releasing are commentary
from filmmaker Torey Haas, bonus, deleted and alternate scenes and a
“behind-the-scenes” featurette.
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