SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

With so much entertainment revolving around a zombie outbreak, how useful would the skills learned in the Boy Scouts be in surviving and saving others?  This might have made for a good movie, but it's, surprisingly, barely touched on in Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.

High school sophomores Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller), and Augie (Joey Morgan) are best friends and apparently the only Scouts (a thinly-veiled version of the Boy Scouts) in their school.  Augie is a pudgy nerd who takes the Scouts seriously and is about to be made a Condor by Scout Leader Rogers (David Koechner) during an overnight camping trip.  Carter wants to ditch the Scouts and get laid -- starting with ditching Augie during the camping trip and going to the senior secret party.  Ben is the level-headed one of the trio, trying to keep the peace with both of them; he also has a crush on Carter's sister Kendall (Halston Sage), a senior with a jerk of a boyfriend.

In the midst of this teen drama, a zombie outbreak happens, first in a lab, then the woods, and soon the whole town is abandoned.  After an argument, the friends split up.  Ben and Carter sneak into a strip club, where the zombie attack but are thwarted by Denise (Sarah Dumont), a stripper -- I mean "cocktail waitress" -- who's a badass with a heart of gold.  Augie heads into town, where he's attacked by zombie Scout Leader Rogers.  Soon the stars are fighting zombies, plus trying to find the secret party so Ben can save Kendall (and presumably everyone else) before the military bombs the town.  And of course the teens will work out their issues with each other along the way.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is a hybrid of teen comedy and horror -- and it fails miserably at both.  The "humor" consists mainly of cursing, zombies doing silly things (pole dancing, bouncing on a trampoline), and gross-out gags involving zombie kills and body parts.  As for horror, the zombies are inconsistent (shambling or running, doing acts from their former life or lunging after the living) and not a real threat to the main characters.  Every part of the plot is cliche, from the friends fighting and making up, to the arming sequence in a home furnishing store; and there's almost no use of the scouting skills the main characters had.

I didn't laugh once during Scouts Guide to the Apocalypse, which is pretty bad for a comedy, and most movies in general.  (The movie also wastes the comic talents of David Koechner and Cloris Leachman.)  This is simply a unfunny, uncreative, terrible movie.

Overall grade: F
Reviewed by James Lynch