Bunkheads is a 6-episode series on Amazon Prime about an underground bunker where four zany survivors of a zombie apocalypse try to survive.
Making light of the undead is almost as easy as well, making fun of horror movies in general. Some of the best, like Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead did it as social commentary, setting the template for many that followed. However, sustaining an entire series about such a thing would seem like a stretch, but web series Bunkheads on Amazon Prime manages to keep most of its ideas fresh by following a strict time rule and a steady flow of increasingly sturdy jabs at the genre and itself, giving it some genuine chewability.
It’s one year after an unexplained end of the world scenario and four random survivors in southern California find themselves bumping heads in an underground bunker in an effort to keep alive … and possibly be key to human survival. They are Cash (Khalif Boyd), a nerdy video game programmer, Matt (Josh Covitt), a wise-cracking 9th-grade English teacher, and Kip (Chris O’Brien) a wannabe white rapper with an obsessive crush on Dani (Carly Turro), an out of work actress, the only girl in a frat-boy circle of boys who don’t quite seem able to be the right solution for keeping our species clicking along.
So in an enclosed space with a bunch of late twenty-somethings (possibly one in their early thirties), things initially center a lot around who will have sex with Dani, something Kip wants for more selfish reasons, he keeping a secret that doesn’t last long and one you’ve probably already figured out. Thankfully, that joke moves on and the series finds other less transparent targets, including politics, entertainment, food resources and other general daily routines where four people in a confined space must deal with. Some of it is pretty obvious and run of the mill, but more often than not, series creator Will Gong finds some cleverness in the setup and reaches past the easy bits, tipping the writing toward racial tensions, sexual dynamics, and even mental degradation. When these land, Bunkheads shows itself to be an innovative take on not just zombies but sitcoms themselves.
That has a lot to do with the cast, all of whom feel a natural fit together, sometimes looking like one of those on-stage improv groups working a skit out on the fly as random topics get thrown out at them. Admittedly, the ten-minute showtime for each episode makes that a lot more punchier than if it had been stretched to a full thirty each. The addition of other cameo-esque members to the cast allow for some further misadventures and sure, it’s not exactly stuffed with high production value, and stories that find ways to work sex back into the mix eventually feel a little threadbare, but the cast is so revved with energy and committed to the silliness, it zips along with plenty of laughs.
With something like this, we’re not meant to ask the logical questions, the series premise merely a jumping off point for young people to talk about the usual hurdles one has in life, the zombies – who are rarely ever seen – just the MacGuffin in keeping them together to do such. Tracking the survivors over a two-year period, there is some surprising originality here and there and a steadily creative sense of trauma and emotion layered behind the comedy, not that it’s in your face, but actually feels rather earned in the finale.
If you’re a fan of zombies, this isn’t really going to scratch any itch as there’s not really any zombie action at all, the series absent of gore and horror. Zombies make only occasional appearances, usually in the opening credits and have no real significance in the stories other than being the reason these people are stuck together. This makes Bunkheads a standard situational comedy in a mostly one-room setting (which isn’t all that different from most primetime sitcoms) and as such, the show finds its footing on that track more than any other. It’s well-written and fast-paced, with an attractive cast and lots of good humor, smart because it knows it has zombies on tap to make fun of but wisely keeps it about the personalities instead, giving this web series all the chomp it needs. Stay tuned for season two.