We wish we could say that Zombibi, which appears to be a Dutch TV movie from RTL, a commercial entertainment channel that tends to specialize in entertainment for people of lower Joe-Schmoe or MAGA-culture intelligence, was worth the 1,50€ we blew on it. The cash, however, like the mostly laughless 82 minutes we gave the often disjointed movie, was wasted on what is, basically, an extremely poorly made movie of no highlights.* One could see a desire, on the part of the scriptwriter (Tij van Marle) and directors (Martijn Smits and Erwin van den Eshoh), of creating a budget-level equivalent of better, more famous and funny (and, at times, scary and tragic) movies like Shaun of the Dead (2004 / trailer) or Zombieland (2009), but unluckily either the directorial and scriptwriting talent of those responsible is as threadbare as the movie's probable budget, or they really didn't give a shit about what they were making.
* As an example of comparison, the four-year-older Dutch zomcom short film Zombeer, which was a wasted life's May 2010 Short Film of the Month, is not only much better made than Zombibi but also has more highlights in slightly more than one-ninth of the running time...
Trailer to
Zombibi:
Arguably, the movie might be funnier to the Dutch, who would promptly understand the scenes that obviously riff on contemporary commercials or programs — the demeanor of the newscaster of the occasionally interjected news report is spot-on Dutch — or pop culture phenomena, but things like that seldom translate well and, often enough, become quickly outdated in the home country. There is a joke stolen from Pulp Fiction (1994 / trailer) involving a limousine and a typical Voice of Holland winner turned national pop singer (Ben Saunders, unknown outside the Netherlands) that manages to be funny even if you don't know who the guy is, but like all the jokes of the movie that manage to work in any way, it only makes the overall dearth of decent jokes more obvious.
Not from the film –
Ben Saunders sings his Dutch hit,
Kill for a Broken Heart:
Zombibi tells the tale of a cog in the machinery of the Dutch business world, Aziz (Mimoun Ouled), who finally has a date setup with his co-working object of desire, Tess (Nadia Palesa Poeschmann, below not from the film). His jealous boss (Kees Boot of Prey [2016 / trailer] and Saint [2010 / trailer], both better movies than this one) uses the never-ending phone calls of Aziz's alpha-man loser brother Mo (Mimoun Ouled Radi, supposedly found somewhere in Black Lotus [2023 / trailer]) as an excuse to fire him, and by the end of the day Aziz finds himself locked up in jail with his brother and three others. As is wont to happen, shortly thereafter West Amsterdam suffers a zombie epidemic caused by the green goo leaking from the space satellite that has crashed into the top of the very building Aziz used to work at, and in which Tess is trapped...
One character that should be added to the above description is Kim (Gigi Ravelli of App [2013 / trailer], below not from the film), the very Dutch-looking hot blonde policewoman with obvious rage issues and unfulfilled relationship desires, who proves to be pivotal to the events more than once. She, along with the somewhat overacted Jeffrey (Sergio Hasselbaink of Sonny Boy [2011 / trailer]), end up being the shining lights and most-enjoyable characters of the movie. (His big scene is an obvious and poorly handled homage to — swipe of? — Ripley [Sigourney Weaver] in Aliens [1986 / trailer].) Somehow, however, from the first moment the name "Tess" is dropped from Kim's lips, it was predictable that she and Tess would ultimately be involved in a bitch-slap fight of sorts — one conjectures that the only reason the filmmakers didn't add the ripping-off of blouse tops to the brew was because Zombibi was a TV movie. (In truth, however, some naked breasts would have improved the movie — hell, almost anything that didn't require directorial skill would've improved the movie.)
Zombibi lost us early, long before the poverty of the CGI effects began to annoy us. The annoying characters we could deal with, as they are all obvious if failed attempts to make specific Dutch stereotypes funny, but when a movie specifically states at one point that one should avoid the green goo and then all the characters get soaked in it every time they fight a zombie, the laziness of the project becomes too obvious. Unlike most of the movies Zombibi tries to emulate, this flick is not a labor of love, or even a project of interest of the filmmakers, it is an obvious job — and as such, it displays about as much care and interest as you find displayed by the average (underpaid) fast-food worker.* (The concept of "care and interest" on part of the filmmakers is gone long before the scene in which you can see cars passing on the road behind when the city is supposedly ravaged and empty.)
* Martijn Smits, who had previously only directed short films, made a frighteningly uninspired feature-film directorial debut here; Erwin van den Eshoh had prior experience, having already delivered Dead End (2006 / trailer), while his most recent film, Love, Fail, Repeat (2025 / trailer), is a Groundhog Day (1993 / trailer)-regurgitation worthy of the Lifetime channel. We conjecture: it'll be a long time before either delivers anything truly of interest.
The zombie electro-wheelchair granny is kinda funny, if not a highlight of the film, and she is also one of the few interludes in which the CGI effects attain a level of gory fun, but all the big shootout scenes display a filmic finesse and CGI-ineffectiveness that is shocking in its unprofessionalism. Zombibi is truly a movie that leaves one wondering why it was made. As such, it might one day enter the realm of so-bad-its-good, but currently, after only 14 years, it still lacks the needed patina and simply just stinks. Don't bother with this one (yet).
A public service announcement from a wasted life:
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