Probably the fact that I had to look up the term ‘millennial’ (it’s unavoidable these days, but I confess I didn’t really know its exact meaning; it’s actually more convoluted than I cared to read about in detail) shows that I’m not one. Nevertheless, the idea of Follow the Dead, Adam William Cahill’s feature debut horror-comedy (zombies against Millennials), boded fairly well in spite of zombie films being less than top of my list when it comes to horror, or comedy.

Discovering this was an Irish production won it points with me without any other input; my weakness for these is something I wholeheartedly and shamelessly admit to. Plus, having reviewed Conor McMahon’s 2021 Let the Wrong One In and not finding it wanting, I had visions of something on a par with Shaun of the Dead, yet was interested to see what Cahill could do here to avoid what could easily end up being a remake with an Irish flavour. Irish humour lends a unique slant to whatever creative effort it’s applied to (it’s almost a perfect marriage with horror comedy), hence my optimism.

In rural Ireland, following the death of his mother, Rob Whelan (Luke Corcoran) has moved in with his cousins Chi and Jay (Tadhg Devery and Luke Collins), and social media personality-wannabe sister Liv (Marybeth Herron) after splitting with his wife Kate (Cristina Ryan), an aspiring police officer. Two years on, news filters through from Dublin, where the shit’s hitting the fan. During a town meeting to separate fact from the inevitable village fiction that’s rife, it appears a vigilante group’s being held responsible for several police deaths, and citizens are divided between joining forces with the police,  and seizing the opportunity to wave their civil rights aloft, missing the point somewhat.

This is where things begin to come undone. When you get halfway through a film and it hasn’t found its footing you begin to realise that unless something extraordinary’s just around the corner then it’s unlikely to be a winner. After a masked intruder appears in the family’s garden, the so far intermittent but inconsequential talk of zombies suddenly comes to the fore in the shape of elderly neighbour Mrs. Mooney, who attacks following a welfare check by the family. This gives rise to a sudden shift in the film’s focus, as shambling hordes of them materialise, with subsequent gore-spattered battles between the living and the undead.

Follow the Dead is pretty slow paced, and with no continuity between the separate plot points it just meanders along a bit aimlessly, like several unrelated stories clumsily shuffled together. Chi and Jay bounce off each other to provide most of the humour, and there’s no denying they are funny, but it’s not scary or comedic enough for a save. Follow the Dead is not an unreasonable watch, especially if you do appreciate those elements specific to Irish films, but there’s a little too much emphasis on the unhappy undercurrent of interpersonal family relationships, adding a drama that darkens it and just doesn’t fit. On top of this there’s also some genuinely touching moments, the result being a rather confused film that can’t quite work out what it wants to be.