After obtaining success with 2002's \Super Troopers,"" comedy troupe Broken Lizard had the notoriety to make any type of comedy they wanted. So they made a horror movie.
Actually, it is a horror film that's funny. Really funny. ""Club Dread"" dips to the level of horror parody, and comes out as a rather hilarious commentary on horror movies.
Like the horror movies that it mocks, the plotline is rather weak and not really logical. However, that was Broken Lizard's goal. The story takes places on Pleasure Island, a getaway resort run by 70s pop singer Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton), along with the standard group of island misfits including the tennis expert, Putnam (Jay Chandrasekhar) and the DJ in charge of drugs, Dave (Paul Soter), among others. Everything is booze, sex, drugs and even more booze until the bodies start turning up. Even then, nobody wants the party to stop.
What allows the movie to work is that it's not as self-referential as the ""Scary Movie"" or ""Scream"" trilogies.Whereas those movies say, ""Look at how witty and clever we are,"" ""Club Dread"" actually trusts its audience to pick up on the references. It doesn't feel the need to hit the audience over the heads with its parody.
Yet ""Club Dread"" openly mocks many aspects of horror movies, from the slow-walking villain to the overuse of first-person cameras to the idiotic resort workers and even the over-the-top gore. The only really scary part of the film is that it could have been an actual horror movie if a character didn't have a crazy outburst every 10 seconds or go off on some hilarious tangent.
The acting is weak, but only because the actors are focused on nailing the mannerisms of their horror movie counterparts. It is obvious that Bill Paxton is having a great time playing the washed-up Jimmy Buffett-wannabe Coconut Pete, a role specifically written for him by Broken Lizard. He had not done a straight-up comedy in years, and his return to the form is quite hilarious. His joy at being away from his recent dramas and being on a light-hearted set is evident when he openly mocks Eddie Money or even the entire concept of the film.
Broken Lizard is not trying to break new ground with ""Club Dread.""They really just wanted the audience to laugh. The rapid-fire pace of the comedy makes it hard not to let out at least a few laughs, and the audience does, a whole lot.
