YMMV / Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018)

• Anvilicious: An oppressed minority forced to live behind a wall because the people who built it think they're dangerous. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The same theme had already been done with Descendants, except this time the minority is supposed flesh-eating heathens rather the children of criminals.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: In the third movie: The "utopia" that the aliens are searching for is Earth. Of course Addison's grandmother would consider the planet where she met the man she loved and gave birth to her daughter a utopia.
• Creepy Awesome: The werewolves in movies 2 and 3. Unlike the zombies, they're not interested in assimilating into society and embrace being wild instead. They even manage to intimidate the aliens in movie 3 and have some of the best songs in the franchise.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Zed's little sister Zoey qualifies as one. Her upbeat demeanor despite her horrible living situation and her pretty modest wish for a dog managed to endear her to quite a lot of viewers.
• Epileptic Trees: A popular fan theory for the cause of Addison's unusual white hair was that she was part zombie. Helped in part by an off-hand comment by Bucky, outright saying their grandfather was bitten in the ear by a zombie. However this was undone when the second film hinted, and the third film confirmed, that she's actually part alien.
• Les Yay: Addison and Eliza have a moment midway through the film, with Addison winning Eliza over by calling her smart, cool and pretty, to which Eliza bashfully replies with "You... think I'm pretty?"
• Moral Event Horizon: Stacy, Lacey, and Tracey positively leap over it when they emotionally manipulate Eliza in order to get their hands on her laptop, and then mess with her computer to turn off Zed's, Bonzo's and Eliza's Z-Bands. Whether Bucky also holds blame here is dubious, since he didn't come up with the plan and only helped execute it without thinking of the potential consequences, which he does show regret for.
• Narm Charm: The movie in a nutshell. Sure, it is very corny, and the racism metaphors are not only beyond obvious but occasionally wander into very unfortunate territory, but it still manages to be enjoyable and heartwarming.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The comic opening explains how a nuclear explosion created the zombies. A power plant explodes in the middle of populated Seabrook and the ensuing radiation turns several innocent people into zombies, who proceed to attack their friends and neighbors in a bloodthirsty frenzy.
  • Watching Zed and Bonzo become fully zombified. Their eyes become further shrunken in, with thick, black veins.
• Preemptive Shipping: People shipped Zed/Addison before the movie even came out.
• Signature Scene:
  • Addison and Zed’s first encounter in the zombie-safe room.
  • The entirety of the "BAMM" music sequence.
  • Addison taking off her blonde wig and revealing her white pixie cut she was born with.
• Signature Song:
  • "BAMM", which was promoted long before the movie and even had its own music video.
  • "We Got This" from Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2. Same treatment as above.
• Special Effects Failure: The zombie makeup is very inconsistent throughout the movie with patches of the actors' actual skin being noticeable.
• Tear Jerker: Eliza's face when the wristbands are tampered with, turning them into how zombies used to be before, and they're stopped and lead away in handcuffs. Her broken words don't help at all: "We don’t have human friends." The expression on Bonzo's face: being the peaceful guy he is, he's thinking My God, What Have I Done? "I almost KILLED someone!".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Addison has white hair because... they needed her to have some embarrassing secret, that’s pretty much it. We never get the slightest indication of why it happened, even though her opening narration goes out of its way to point out the hair is completely dye-resistant, which definitely seems like it’s leading to a reveal of her being part-zombie or even some other supernatural creature. The ending of the second movie hints that there is indeed something supernatural going on with it. The third movie confirms there's something extraterrestrial going on with it: Addison's white hair comes from her alien heritage, and her mom has white hair, too.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Addison's Moonstone Mystery shorts, which have very stiff animation, unnatural movements, and character designs that look a bit too realistic. It almost looks like a mobile game.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Addison comparing her own troubles of fitting in to the zombies' plight of being oppressed didn't go over too well for some viewers. Remember: The zombies have a curfew, are heavily discriminated against and have to fight for the most basic human rights, while Addison - has white hair. That she can easily cover up. Yep, totally the same. This only gets worse in the sequels. A substantial amount of time is spent on Addison once again feeling like an outcast because of her hair, when the different monster races introduced face significantly bigger problems.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The attempt to make the human characters Color-Coded for Your Convenience. The idea seems to be that putting them in sugary pastels would make them seem clean and polished and reminiscent of the 1950s in comparison to the zombie characters. Unfortunately putting the humans in all matching blue or pink ensembles with no jeans and no patterns (stripes, florals, etc) just falls flat. Nobody dresses like that every day in real life. Not to mention that Black Mirror already did a similar thing with its season three premiere. It could also allude to that everyone in Seabrook is Obsessively Normal.
  • The "werewolves" of "Zombies 2" look absolutely nothing like wolves, and just resemble human teenagers wearing animal pelts.
  • Despite going to great lengths to hide her hair, Addison apparently went to the effort of having her white hair styled into a feathered bob that would have been awesome... in 2003. They probably intended for her to look more wild or whimsical with her hair out, but they ended up with a bad wig that swallowed up the actor's face, looked odd with her sensible costumes, and in general, was styled in a way entirely impractical for the purposes of supposedly being pinned away under a wig. And that's all without getting into the narrative blunder of trying to compare racial segregation to having weird hair. However, if it was flattering and attractive, just in an odd color, she might decide she wants to be different and go out without her wig. By keeping it in an unattractive cut, her parents guaranteed she'd keep looking normal— even if Addison decided she liked the color, the terrible cut would be enough to convince her to put on the wig. Noticeably, the promos for the sequel show Addison with a similar haircut to her wig, just white.
  • During the pep rally, the cheerleadering uniforms have tight pencil skirts. They're stretchy, but still seem clingy and restrictive during the stunts. Compared to Addison's pleated skirt she wears during the song-and-dance numbers, which shows off flexibility and movement, the cheer squad's performances don't measure up. Truth in Television: Many competition uniforms at the high school level these days use a stretchy pencil-style skirt, rather than pleated ones. ^note Arguably, it's for aerodynamics. They're stretchy enough to allow freedom of movement and flexibility but without the potential risk for it affecting a flyer's momentum. There are still schools that go for the more traditional pleated skirt, but many have switched over to the stretchy style.

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