Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Zombies AND comedy? What an original idea! Well of course it isn’t, and this icky, sticky, teenage-boys-y addition to an already overcrowded sub-genre adds precisely nothing to the likes of ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Zombieland’, ‘Cockneys vs Zombies’ and all the others we’d prefer to forget. The title says it all: three sex-mad boy scouts – the serious one (Tye Sheridan), the mouthy one (Logan Miller) and the fat, useless one (Joey Morgan) – are forced to tool up and fight back when the living dead invade their small California town.

It was predictable that ‘Scouts Guide’ would take an approach to gender politics that makes ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’ look like ‘The Female Eunuch’, but the lazy, violent misogyny is still hard to stomach. The only female character who isn’t a ball-busting harridan or a brainless bimbo is – wait for it – a stripper in hotpants who works at a bar called Lawrence of Alabia. And that’s the level of humour we’re looking at here: the kind of gag that might make a particularly immature 11-year-old laugh – after you explained the word ‘labia’ to them.

But for anyone older and smarter, this is a tiresome, grating watch, flatly directed, crudely scripted and obnoxiously performed: Miller in particular will make you want to punch the nearest teenage boy in the face, just because.