A young woman travels to a remote plastic surgery clinic to get a breast reduction with her boyfriend and her mother who loves getting plastic surgery. Once there, things go sideways and a virus is unleashed in the clinic, making the people therein ravenous and crazed.
Written by Lars Damoiseaux, Eveline Hagenbeek and directed by Damoiseaux, Yummy is a bit nuts and a lot of fun. The story is simple with a trio going to a sketchy plastic surgery clinic far away and finding something majorly wrong once they get there. The story is not particularly original, but the proceedings are fun. This means that some things can easily be overlooked for the sake of other things. Of course, these could be talked about in more details, but none of the surprises (good or bad) should be spoiled here. The story is basic with a lots of set ups for gore and special effects and it’s fun as it is. It’s the kind of story you might forget really soon after watching the film, but it’s worth watching anyways.
Working within this story are a few characters that mostly come off as ridiculous or gore-fodder. Maaike Neuville leads the pack as Alison and she gives her character just the right je-ne-sais-quoi and innocence for the nonsense that is about to unfold. Her performance is a bit nubile, but it works for the part. Playing the boyfriend with a fear of blood Michael is Bart Hollanders, and playing the mother who loves plastic surgery Sylvia is Annick Christiaens. The three of them have an odd chemistry that works for the film and helps things move along with a sense of humor. They work well with the material and keep the spirit of the material. Also fun to watch is Clara Cleymens as Janja who gives a performance that just the right level of off for her character. There is something off with her character and it can be seen from the start.
The last extra character that needs to be the special effects as they are fantastic and quite gruesome at times, bringing the right kind of mayhem and blood to the film. In a film with a character listed as “Half intestine zombie woman,” the effects had to be on point and they are. The crew behind the special effects is clearly talented and their work here shows that, in particular the aforementioned “Half intestine zombie woman” and a certain little critter that is creepy, gooey, gross, and adorable. The work the effects team put in the film is fantastic.
Yummy is a fun, mayhem-filled take on zombies of sort, that is go-go-go for most of its runtime. It doesn’t waste the viewer’s time in getting to the point and it just goes balls-to-the-wall for most of its time. The film doesn’t have any illusions about what it is and it makes the most of everything it has to put on the screen. The special effects are fantastic and perhaps only a few parts are a bit off, but it’s easy to overlook these as the rest of the film is just insanity and bloody, gory, gooey-ness.
The Fantasia International Film Festival runs every year, and this year runs virtually from August 20th until September 2nd.