First Kafka made Gregor wake up as a bug. Now, Drex Greene is waking up in a body bag. Sony pictures is venturing into webisodes (jumping on the same bandwagon as NBC with The Office and SyFy with Battlestar Galactica, to name two others). In Woke Up Dead, Jon Heder, probably best known for playing the starring role in Napoleon Dynamite, plays Drex Greene, just a regular guy in his twenties, who wakes up in a body bag, scaring the young medical student tech (Krysten Ritter from 27 Dresses and Breaking Bad) who was presumably about to slice him open for an autopsy (or cut his clothes away, who knows?)
I took a look at the first two episodes (the first four air today, Monday October 5, with one to follow each week in October). I have to admit that I’m a fan of Heder, even though I don’t think I can call what he does acting. He is just such a dork that it’s interesting to watch him on-screen. I also like Ritter, who played a ditzy, goth-dressing secretary in 27 Dresses and made a forgettable role a little more interesting. As Cassie, she already has more to do here than she did in the movie. She tries to help Drex figure out how he could be both dead and sitting on a metal table talking with her.
Drex’s roommate, Matt, is a Jack Black wanna-be (go watch the clip and tell me that’s not supposed to be Jack Black, playing second fiddle to John Cusack in High Fidelity). Even though that’s the case, I still enjoy Matt’s (Josh Gad) determination to document his roommate’s strange condition, after filming Drex lying at the bottom of a bathtub for more than 15 minutes. Matt immediately determines that Drex is a zombie, but shows no fear of his brains being eaten. This may be strictly due to a lack of brains on Matt’s part though.
Mary Janice Davidson may have a case against the web series developers though: The instance of Drex getting mauled by a bus and then waking up unscathed to talk to a tech from a body bag smacks distinctly of the vampire series Undead and Unwed. Betsy can’t believe she is a vampire, either, and along with two friends, tries to figure out what has happened to her.
Despite these similarities, I found myself thinking, “Hey, it’s okay. There are no more original plots, right?” My kids are going to love this. They are zombie obsessed, and the younger two are still disappointed that Zombieland is rated R. For four minutes of your time, Woke Up Dead promises to be a lot of fun.
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Oct 05, 2009 @ 18:00 EST5EDT
