Overall, I was entertained enough by this, but it also has quite a bit of room for improvement. Dug some of the humor, other parts not so much. When the “Maybe it was a wild animal. Or a group of wild animals.” line was repeated the first time, I groaned because I realized we’d hear 2-3 more times. I guess it would have worked better for me if it had been something quirky or otherwise unique instead of just a statement that’s kinda sensible. Some other people in the audience, of course, found it absolutely hilarious.
The “That’s a George Romero car” line… ugh. It doesn’t make any sense and is just crammed in there for reference’s sake. Lame.
It being self-referential felt… inconsequential? The kids were in this as a “Children/youth is our hope/future” element, I guess, but it wasn’t tied into what the other characters’ threads.
The fact that the messaging was so ham-handed that they even had the Waits narrator spell out at the end made me initially think this was meant to be a riff on how zombies in movies most of the time are some kind of metaphor/allegory. However, having read now that Jarmusch doesn’t seem to be particularly familiar with zombie movies, I’m now inclined to think he figures he did something new with the genre instead.
Also found it weird how quickly–and IMO it’s never really explained–everyone goes from “Dude, are you for real?” to accepting that zombies might be behind all this.