- "Half Zombie. Half Demon. All Zemon!"
Dead Before Dawn is a 2012 Canadian horror comedy film featuring Christopher Lloyd.
Casper is a college student hanging out with his friends as he watches his grandfather's occult shop. During this meet up, they accidentally break an ancient jar. This jar had a dark spirit in it, who causes everybody the kids encounter to off themselves. It then possesses the corpses to become zombie demons, or "zemons," as our heroes refer to them. The friends then have to contend with these zemons while trying to reverse the curse by daylight, or else it will be permanent.
This film contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: When the occult bookshop owner, played by Christopher Lloyd, learns of the Ash Demon's return, he exclaims "Great Scott!"
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: At the end of the movie, Jerk Jock Patrick tells two girls that he's not interested in having a threesome with them anymore. Then he clarifies that he's asking them to join him in a foursome instead.
- Big Bad: The Ash Demon controlling the zemons.
- Brainless Beauty: Downplayed with Lucy, who is fairly ditzy but was able to write a poem with "sexual undertones" that their teacher applauded (although its stated said teacher doesn't have too high of standards) and helps Seth out with his website design at the end.
- Cool Old Guy: Gramps is a knowledgable, fairly caring guy who has dedicated his life to keeping a dangerous demon locked away.
- Dreadlock Warrior: Dazzle has dreads and is pretty tough.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The Ash Demon is an incorporeal force that is freed form its prison and immediately starts zombifying the populace with no rhyme or reason behind it.
- Here We Go Again!: The Ash Demon is sealed away, and time is rewound so that nobody actually died. Last shot of the film involves Casper accidentally breaking the urn again.
- Heroic Seductress: Lucy in a scene or two, trying to bind zemons to her will (to Seth and later Becky's jealousy).
- I Love the Dead: Seth decides that zemon!Lucy is gonna be his girlfriend after he manages to bind her to his will.
- Lovable Jock: Dazzle is a good football player and longtime friend of Casper without any visible mean streak or ego off the field.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Charlotte is a regular at the Occult Barn and excited by the stuff there.
- Non-Action Girl: Lucy. She does brandish a mop for a while but is never actually seen striking a zemon with it.
- Odd Friendship: Lucy and Charlotte seem to have differing interests (not to mention intelligence levels) but hang out a lot and do seem to be close friends.
- Our Demons Are Different: These are dark spirits that can cause suicides and raise the dead.
- Our Zombies Are Different: These are raised by demons as Mooks.
- Pom-Pom Girl: The Eagles cheerleading team are portrayed as being heavily invested in their team and during the championship game, they all turn and lift up their skirts at the opposing team (the Wildcats) while wearing Goofy Print Underwear that says "Wildcats suck." Lucy, the only cheerleader to have a name and significant role, is a Brainless Beauty, but doesn't go out of her way to be mean. While she reacts with disgust and annoyance when Seth crudely hits on her, she reacts the same way toward Handsome Lech and Jerk Jock Patrick later on.
- Precursor Hero: Casper's great-grandfather was a Hunter of Monsters who captured the Big Bad first time around.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The Ash Demon acquires zemons by influencing people to commit suicide so it can possess their corpses.
- Reset Button: The spell to trap the Ash Demon turns out to be this, rewinding time to just before it was released.
- Suicide as Comedy: Half the jokes in this movie are related to the increasingly over-the-top ways the victims of the zemon curse kill themselves.
- Threesome Subtext: A retrospective example, but Patrick is fine with him and his girlfriend hanging out with her friend Lucy a lot, and later admits this was because he was hoping they could have a threesome some day (a revelation which disgusts both Charlotte and Lucy).
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Patrick thinks that he's The Bully in a college romcom, when he's really the Cannon Fodder Jerkass in a zombie film. This gets him eaten by zemons.
- You Killed My Father: Casper's father was slain by the evil force in front of him when he was a child.
