AS WE KNOW IT - Mark Reviews Movies

As We Know It, Buffalo 8

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 9, 2023

A potential zombie apocalypse erupts in Los Angeles, but a guy is so despondent over a five-month-old breakup that he doesn't even notice or seem to care once he does. That's the premise of As We Know It, which has been made by people who apparently haven't noticed that tongue-in-cheek zombie stories have been done before—and much better than this one. More importantly, they don't seem to care about either component of the central premise, too.

Here's a zombie movie, then, that's both limited and lazy with its monsters, who have come into existence because of a bad batch of soy milk that, apparently, is all the rage in the movie's setting of the late 1990s. To be fair, the movie does open with a zombie attack, as a local TV new broadcaster (played by Chris Parnell) records an on-location report about an influx of the undead in the Hollywood Hills.

It seems pretty calm, though, save for the fact that man preparing for a jog is about a dozen feet away from a lumbering zombie in the backdrop and, somehow, doesn't notice. Once the zombie does attack, it's difficult to tell which is more irritating: that the victim seriously didn't register a flesh-eating monster as it approached him (and didn't think that maybe going for a run in the middle of such an outbreak might not be the soundest idea) or that the reporter comes across as apathetic about the carnage.

The first part gives one a sense of the absence of logic in this story, which is somewhat intentional, of course, because the movie is a comedy first and foremost without a care or worry about such matters. This is clearly a satire from co-writer/director Josh Monkarsh, perhaps about how little people actually do care or worry about terrible things happening in the world when we all have our own problems with which to deal. Sure, screenwriters Monkarsh, Brandon DePaolo, and Christopher Francis have the recent pandemic and the unsettling reaction from those who denied, ignored, or attempted to rush to the end of it as evidence of that phenomenon.

Again, though, the movie doesn't really concern itself with such things, because there's second part of that first scene with the zombie attack. It points toward the general tone of this movie, which is decidedly apathetic about everything happening in the background.

Our main characters—best friends James (Mike Castle), a writer struggling with his second novel, and Bruce (Oliver Cooper), a general sort of loser—have a big plan to watch a movie and eat some food while they wait for the zombie outbreak to just sort of resolve itself in some way. Because the story is set in the '90s, many jokes revolve around pop culture from the period (including an anachronistic reference to "yacht rock") and older technology (laserdiscs, landlines, a word processor, etc.), so if there's a bigger point about denial or complacency in the face of disaster, it's kind of lost on the cheap and easy jokes.

It's also lost in the screenplay's insistence that these two guys, James' ex-girlfriend Emily (Taylor Blackwell), and their interconnected relationship troubles are of much, if any, interest or intrigue against such a backdrop. They could be, of course, with characters and conflicts that feel authentic or possess some sort of comedic/dramatic flair. Instead, we just find out that James and Emily both regret the breakup to different degrees, talk around the issues at the heart of their problems as a couple, and are regularly interrupted by a zombie or two and the revelation that Emily once had a completely meaningless fling with Bruce.

In other words, everything here—from the satire, to the zombies, to the characters, to the relationship melodrama—is as obvious, lazy, and underwritten as it can be. The actors don't help, either because they're not finding (or being informed of) the right pitch of the material or because they know the material is a dud. Whatever the reason may be, the monotonous plotting, character beats, and jokes are played in consistent, deadening monotone on top of it all.

In the way As We Know It plods through its predictable story, the whole movie takes on the energy and attitude of a zombie. It's a lifeless comedy.

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