Black Friday Parent Guide

On the evening of Thanksgiving, the staff of We Love Toys report to work in preparation for Black Friday. Tensions between coworkers and managers are at a breaking point as corporate HQ introduces new mandates, like taking away paid breaks. But these problems fade in importance when customers who have touched a strange, gooey substance start acting stranger than usual. With a growing zombie outbreak on their hands, the staff must band together to save themselves and the store.

I love this premise. Retail workers defending themselves from zombies on the busiest day of the year in a campy critique of capitalism? Sign me up! The movie starts out strong as we meet some of our main characters and get a feel for the coming storm that is Black Friday. Unfortunately, the film peters out soon after that. The small budget is obvious from the beginning, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the horror genre, but the constraints on the writers are a hindrance here. Dare I say it, I want more zombies in my zombie movie! We spend way too much time locked up with the employees in the back of the store without any action. With a larger budget, and perhaps more experienced writers, this could have been a fun, if gory, time, but instead it crumbles into an incoherent mess.

On the plus side, it’s always nice to see Bruce Campbell back in action and he is a standout amongst the cast. The rest of the ensemble’s performances range from surprisingly good to cringingly terrible. Many of the special effects are well done, if a little homemade looking, but some of them are so amateur that they fall into “student film” territory. The ending is a cautionary tale against having ambitions that are greater than your abilities, with a final monster that looks like a child’s craft project.

Obviously, as with most entries into this genre, violence and gore are everywhere. There’s also a huge amount of swearing, which makes this an inappropriate viewing experience for children and teens, as well as many adults. If you’re a zombie fanatic and just want to have a good time, Black Friday might give you some comic chills. For everyone else, this is going to be an obvious pass, even if it is on sale.