Dir. Rickey Bird, Jr. (2022)
Armed with a chainsaw, a naked girl must fight against the zombie horde.
CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Here’s to the new short, kinda the same as the old short! Rickey Bird (and the Zombie Girl) is back, this time with a brand new short that expands upon the old one and even has a brand new lead actress. Nicole Cinaglia takes over the lead role of Barbara, and this time she’s running from a guy with a gun and a zombie. Bird intended this short to open up the NZG world a bit and leave fans clamoring for more, and boy does it do its job. This one is more like a remake of the first, following the same three-act process of “girl drives in car, girl finds dress ripped off, girl fights zombies anyway.” Despite being made for even less money, this one feels much more fleshed out, with a more intricate location, a deeper plot, and a good bit more character development (though still hardly any, as the movie is designed to make you want to learn more about this world.) It is, essentially, a remake of the original, but in a much more appealing and
The biggest gripe about the previous film was its overreliance on digital effects and poor lighting, both of which served to hide the lower budget and some of the nudity. Thankfully, NZGIB handles the gore with some great practical effects, giving us a great eye pop and a head that is severed with a chainsaw. Yeah, it’s clearly fake, but it’s of the slightly-higher-than-Troma level, which is more than good enough for me. Bird gets great mileage for his money, delivering an intriguing short that really has the basis for a feature film, and his display of talent that doesn’t almost entirely revolve around a grindhouse parody leads me to believe that he’s going to get it done if someone gives him the chance. This one is short at only around 13 minutes, cutting out the overly-long credits from the previous film, and it feels like it has a lot more to say than the original. A great short that’s going to absolutely kill it at the festivals.
