Operation Infiltration

So the Factory Theater has planned this kick-ass George Romero theme party. They totally went out and bought blood packs, and they have this big screen that plays these awesome clips of people screaming with fake blood on their faces, and in between scenes they play all this ’80s music that’s, like, so appropriate and cheesy.

The only thing the Factory forgot to do is put the audience on the Evite. In constructing this spoof of/homage to the godfather of low-budget deadpan splatter, B-horror apostles Tamayo and Digilio have created an intricate and ironic Halloween costume so dependent on insider knowledge that only their closest friends will get the joke. Worse, they’ve forgotten to punch air holes for breathing, so we eventually get asphyxiated by a protracted half parody that may boast an outlandish plot, but often forgets to satirize itself. (If it doesn’t mean to, it should; Xeroxed apocalyptic creepiness can’t stand on its own.)

A Cuisinart of Romero film premises (that also occasionally knocks on Wood), Operation draws heavily from his two earliest, Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies, with a plot involving three intergalactic zombies who poison a small town’s water supply, and the maverick contracted by the FBI to stop them. This being the Factory, there’s some great bugged-out acting to recommend—Mike Beyer as a loser dad who unwittingly becomes an action hero, unbilled Allison Cain as a frumpy news commentator—but Digilio, usually the Off Loop’s sensei of orchestrated group melee, does little with his cast of 26. While his three lead zombies are beautifully stiff, the world around them shouldn’t be.—Christopher Piatt