Last month I told you about the trailer for Corona, a film that had been conceived, written and shot since the first flushes of Covid-19. At the time it seemed like an incredible feat, like it would definitively become the first coronavirus movie that any of us saw. However, I am afraid to tell you that it has been beaten to the punch. Because, in that time, another coronavirus movie was written and shot. Furthermore, it was released on Friday. World, meet Corona Zombies.

Coronavirus: the movie is somehow already here – but are we ready for it? Read more

In truth, Corona Zombies barely qualifies as a film. It’s only an hour long, and you can only watch it by subscribing to the Full Moon Features streaming service (other available films include Evilbong 666 and Swedish Boarding School Girls). But, screw it, it still counts. And now that you’ve got plenty of time on your hands, you should probably watch it.

Turned around in 28 days with every member of the cast and crew under self-isolation, Corona Zombies is actually the result of a deft sleight of hand. It only has one actor – Cody Renee Cameron, last seen playing a prostitute in Vince Gilligan’s El Camino – with the rest stitched together from Donald Trump soundbites, that viral clip of the spring break idiots. Primarily, though, the film is made up of redubbed footage from two old zombie B-movies, Hell of the Living Dead and Zombies vs Strippers. Corona Zombies is, in effect, the What’s Up, Tiger Lily? of the lockdown age.

It has a shaky start. Cameron, playing an airhead named Barbie, trots out all the familiar jokes that you’re already sick of – “Coronavirus? Why is everyone drinking beer?” “Wuhan? But I like that rap group” – before things get up and running. And in that sense, Corona Zombies is the model of efficient exposition. Barbie watches the news. The anchor describes the symptoms of the virus, and then immediately cuts away to breaking news about how the virus has definitely turned waves of people into zombies. And then we’re off to the races.

We visit ground zero of the virus; a Chinese bat soup factory which is already under full attack from the zombies. A zombie taskforce is put together to murder the zombies. They stop off along the way to catch a toilet roll hoarder. There are many, many cracks about maintaining a six-foot distance. “This is for not washing your hands!” a character screams as he offloads the contents of a machine gun into a swarm of zombies. During one of the most exploitative scenes, where a young woman’s naked breasts are splattered with blood from a nearby zombie disembowelment, a news reporter gravely implies that none of this would have happened if everyone had observed social distancing. It’s a bit like watching a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, which is no bad thing.

If this was any other time, I’d advise skipping Corona Zombies. It’s fun for 20 minutes, but then burns out as the central gimmick wears on. Only a certain amount of coronavirus jokes exist at this point, and Corona Zombies tells them all repeatedly. It’s the sort of thing you’d watch drunk in your house at midnight. But then again, that’s how you’re going to watch all films for the foreseeable future, so it has to be worth a go.

In the future, everyone will make a coronavirus movie. And, for the most part these will be sad and serious and boring, and will largely exist so that Mark Ruffalo – who will play a senator whistleblowing governmental negligence in every single one of them – can emote sufficiently for awards season to notice. Meanwhile, now that we’re in the thick of it, the heavy genre of Corona Zombies seems like the only acceptable place to meet this thing. It’s a perfect reaction piece. Schlocky, tongue-in-cheek, over the top. It exists to undermine the thing that we’re all scared of. Its intention cannot be faulted.