Witness Infection: A Novel Concept Painfully Squandered
Written by Carlos Alazraqui (Reno 911!, Rocko's Modern Life, The Fairly OddParents) and Jill-Michele Melean (MadTV), Witness Infection is a dull-witted comedy that seeks to bind the mob movie with the zombie genre. Although it features an intriguing cast (including voice actors Maurice LaMarche and Tara Strong, amongst others), this braindead genre hybrid lacks the laughs, gore, and gags to truly do its concept justice.
Sometimes the past comes back to bite you. Two rival mob families are transferred from the Witness Protection Agency by mistake to same city, Temecula, CA.
If a bad film is a good educator, then Witness Infection is a masterclass in film education. From its narrative framing and structure to its characters, all the way down to its comedy, pacing, and performances, the film serves as 80-minute example of what not to do. It takes a novel idea, reduces it down to the level of low-rent sketch comedy, and stretches it out to feature length. It painfully squanders its potential in nearly every respect; it’s not funny enough, gory enough, or mobster enough to satisfy any of the genre elements it amateurishly attempts to weave together.
Its script is far and away its biggest issue. For starters, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way two rival mob families would be transferred to the same city, accident or not. We never actually see either family get transferred, or really see them speak of being in the Witness Protection Program. In fact, these two mob families essentially go around business as usual, looking conspicuously like mobsters in their tacky, cliché tracksuits, without the Witness Protection Agency factoring into things in any substantial way. That whole side of the plot is really only there so screenwriters Alazraqui and Melean could have themselves a halfway clever title.
To make matters worse, the film’s chosen narrative revolves around an awkward arranged marriage that’s supposed to unite the two families. The chosen suitor is Carlo (played Jim Belushi’s son, Robert), the black sheep of the Serrelli family, who’s been intentionally kept out of the sordid family affairs and works as a dog groomer. Carlo’s distance from the family business is enough to raise a hefty eyebrow, but the situation is made all the more bizarre when we learn that Carlo’s brother, Dominic (played obnoxiously by Bret Ernst), is not only an active participant in the family crime biz, but also openly sleeping with the bride-to-be, Patricia (Erinn Hayes). Amidst all that malarky, there’s a sweeping zombie infection that’s brought on by bad sausages and extreme indigestion that eventually intersect with Carlo and his two pals, Gina (Jill-Michele Melean) and Vince (Vince Donvito), leading up to a baffingly dumb conclusion.
You would expect a film like this to have big, over-the-top performances with a hefty helping of cheese, but you don’t really get any of that either. All of the characters are dimensionless and the performances don’t add any additional shape or color; they’re pretty uniformly flat and stilted, ranging from outright bland to terrible cliché caricature. The one exception is a fleeting scene shot as a parody of Pulp Fiction, featuring Gary Anthony Williams and Joseph D. Reitman, which is the first scene that really gives the film some energy and some genuine laughs. Outside of a few jokes, the comedy fails to find its target, content to fill itself up full of mean-spiritedness and fart gags. Adding insult to injury is the sluggish pacing, the uneven audio, and the dreadfully overly dramatic and suspense score from Andrew Scott Bell. It uses some bad digital blood effects (the worst being the ones that speckle the camera lens), but the moments of practical effect stand out — it really needed more of that to hold interest.
In the end, all you’re left with is a mildly intriguing concept that’s poorly executed, not able to pierce the divide between “bad” and “so bad, it’s good.” Aside from joining zombies with mobsters (which is the only thing that makes it unique as a zombie film), Witness Protection has very little to offer in the ways of horror, comedy, or crime. But for those that study film, this abysmal genre mashup can serve a poignant reference guide for all things that just don’t work.
Recommendation: Unless you’re a student of film (and want to know what not to do) or have an unusually strong desire to see a mob/zombie hybrid, go ahead and take a pass on this one.
Rating: 1 inept mobster outta 5.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!