Zombiology: Enjoy Yourself Tonight is the latest film from Hong Kong-based director Alan Lo, who is previously known primarily for directing shorts. A Cantonese-language production, it seems as though something must’ve gotten lost in translation with the film’s title. There are certainly zombies afoot, though perhaps not as many as you might expect, they aren’t being studied and I’m not sure whether I’m being wished or commanded to enjoy myself tonight. Regardless, mission accomplished as the film manages to get by on style and charm even as it seems to risk constant derailment over its inability to focus on a single plot line for any length of time.

The film opens on a dark alleyway where a cop gets zombified by a magical chicken-faced cube monster that looks like something the Power Rangers might come up with if they landed an endorsement from KFC. If you wanted to appeal to my lowbrow sensibilities, it would be hard to do better than a kawaii voodoo chicken mascot, which had me all hot and bothered anticipating unhinged wackiness a la Tokyo Gore Police or Meatball Machine, but what we end up getting is closer to the 90s classic, Biozombie, both in tone and in narrative. Both are zombie comedy movies shot in Hong Kong, both feature a duo of aimless youths who are actually in their 30s, and both feel like they came from the 90s.

This is evident in the visuals that have an almost grating fluorescence during the film’s zombie sequences to the ostentatious clothing of the protagonists but particularly in its comedic. Comedy doesn’t tend to hold up well to translation, succumbing to both a loss of nuance and the problems of disparate cultural norms. Zombiology doesn’t suffer greatly from a loss of nuance, as it never seems to have attempted any in the first place, opting for a slapstick approach that can end up feeling forced, like a sitcom waiting for a laugh track that will never come, but it with that comes a certain innocence. In an age where comedy tends to lean heavily on irony and subversion, the complete lack of cynicism here is admirable, if not that funny, at least not for American audiences. Where the comedy aspect starts to show the cultural divide is in its subject matter, with a recurring gag about real estate salesman being more vicious and persistent than the zombie hordes.

What you wouldn’t expect from a slapstick zombie comedy is a melodramatic atonement subplot and it’s here that Zombiology has its identity crisis. This story centers around the father of one of the protagonists (Alex Man), Lung (Michael Ning) who has recently been released from jail after serving time for his role in an accident that leads to Lung’s step-mom, Shan (Carrie Ng), becoming crippled and the death of her brother. If this sounds really heavy and kind of an odd inclusion for a zombie comedy that is otherwise designed for light-hearted escapism, it is, and while this plotline is instrumental in bringing the case together, they don’t otherwise interact in a very meaningful way and it ends up feeling like two different movies that happen to share the same world. The performances themselves are compelling in their own way, with Man and Ng both exhibiting a level of comfort with this style of melodrama, but this style of performance feels from my American perspective to be too exaggerated and more something we would expect out of a soap opera.

The performances of the two leads, Ning’s Lung and his equally immature partner-in-crime, Chi-Yeung (Kai-Chung Cheung), fare better in translation, with the pair having a strong comedic chemistry you might expect from an established duo. The two share a strong camaraderie and dreams of becoming superheroes, but while Chi-Yeung is a carefree narcissist, driven by his pursuit of a woman to share in the glory of his six-pack, Lung is played as more of a straight man, whose moments of contemplation serve as a means to bridge the gap between the film’s comedic and dramatic elements. While Chan-Yat (Cherry Ngan), an actress in Shan’s theater company, is the most competent character in the film when it comes to actual zombie-killing and initially seems like she will be a major protagonist, she is absent for a large part of the film and doesn’t receive much development outside of her role as a love interest. Notable side characters include Egg, a lovelorn delivery boy who is obsessed with Shan and Yee-Sue (Venus Wong), an athlete that Lung is infatuated with.

You could be forgiven at this point in the review for forgetting that this is a zombie movie and that’s alright because the film does too. They get to it eventually, but outside of the last 20 minutes or so, the zombie scenes are few and far between. These scenes, when they happen, provide a nice visual contrast with a heavy use of stark lighting and shadow accompanied by an energetic hard rock score that sounds like it would be at home in a Sonic the Hedgehog game. The action choreography is eye-catching and while it doesn’t have a lot of notable stunt work, it does feature some solid gore and brutal improvised weapons, including a flying guillotine out of a classic kung-fu movie.

Zombiology: Enjoy Yourself Tonight has its share of missteps and has a hard time figuring out what tone it’s going for, but if you don’t mind wading through the melodrama, it has a lovable nostalgic feel that only 90s kids will get.™ If this was an American film, it would star Pauly Shore and Brendan Fraser, and anyone that enjoys that carefree, implicitly stoner approach to comedy will likely have some fun with this one.