Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Set Visit

On the Set of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Screams rise from the bowels of the historic Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. They begin with a single female shrill and erupt into an alarming roar.

These sounds of panic and fear carry through the Park Plaza’s foundation, originating from an underground, empty pool where the latest Paramount production, the comedy-horror film Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, has sunk its decayed teeth. This is the backdrop of macabre buffet, where many will die and three unlikely heroes will rise.

But not just yet. First, a zombie invasion needs to be choreographed.

In a room adjacent to the pool, writer-director Christopher Landon sits at video village, eyes glued to the monitor. He’s overseeing a sequence in which an undead horde crashes the aforementioned youth-driven bacchanal, feasting on unsuspecting revelers. The shot he’s trying to secure finds Scouts Guide’s love interest “Kendall” (played by Halston Sage) caught on the pool’s ladder. She’s in a tight spot.

Landon explains between takes, “There’s been a whole attack in this pool and there’s a zombie at the top and he almost grabs her. They’re [also] pulling on her leg. She kicks them in the face and knocks them off and there’s a big whistle and she looks over and there’s our hero scouts who show up with their homemade weapons.”

Those hero scouts are Ben, Carter and Augie (Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller and Joseph Morgan, respectively) – a now-hardened teen trio that venture off on a scouting adventure, at the beginning of the film, only to return to their idyllic small town of Deerfield to discover the zombie apocalypse has struck. Through the course of the film, they rely on their scouting knowledge and bonds of friendship to survive.

Joining this exciting cast of “scouts” are David Koechner (as the ill-fated “Scout Leader Rogers”), Patrick Schwarzenegger and Cloris Leachman, who appears in a sequence surely to shock and amuse audiences.

“I like to pitch it as ‘Superbad’ meets ‘Zombieland,’” executive producer Sean Robins says, describing the tone of Scouts Guide. Robins was first introduced to the script five years ago by manager/producer Bryan Brucks. At the time, a draft of the script had been penned by Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Evans. Andy Fickman and Betsy Sullenger came aboard to help produce and set the film up at Paramount. As Robins says: “We brought on Chris Landon to write and direct and get us to where we are today.”

Landon’s no stranger to the horror-thriller genre having penned Paranormal Activity parts 2 through 4 and directed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. The filmmaker explains that Scouts Guide allows him to helm a love letter to the films he was raised on. “This is literally a really gory, R-rated version of ‘The Goonies,’” he says. “That’s the spirit of the movie. There’s something charming and oddly whimsical about it while it’s still really violent, over-the-top and crazy.”

Landon’s film language doesn’t end with just The Goonies. Gremlins, An American Werewolf in London and the splatter classics from “zombie godfather” George A. Romero’s oeuvre – Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead – are given a tip of the hat by the filmmaker.

With the “attack on Kendall” sequence complete, it’s time for the next set-up. Landon returns to the pool – a tapestry of graffiti (decals created by five different artists placed on the walls by the production team) awash in various, vividly-colored lights.

This is a radically different location from a week ago where the production was shooting in a desolate Cypress, California strip mall. That evening found the scouts navigating their way through a parking lot populated by the undead for a scene set near the beginning of the film. It embraced an eerie, ominous tone. Today at the Park Plaza Hotel, it’s pure chaos as both zombie actors and party extras mingle for a scene that takes place in the third act. According to Landon, there are “about 70 zombies who have run into the pool. There’s about 300+ kids, but a lot of them are dead now. They’re turning into zombies as we speak.”

FX artist Tony Gardner hustles around the set, hands clutching a plastic bag full of intestines, to help achieve the zombie transformation. This is “normal” for the Academy Award-nominated industry vet who previously brought the dead back to life in Return of the Living Dead and Zombieland. On Scouts Guide, not only is Gardner delivering the walking dead – “medically accurate” design work he says is unlike any zombie makeup you’ve seen before – but he promises moviegoers will be introduced to zombie cats and roadkill as well.

Sheridan, Miller and Morgan arrive at the pool location to meet their director for what is essentially a “hero shot” – their arrival to this bloody party. The scouts’ uniforms reflect not just merit badges but the wear and tear that came from previous skirmishes with the undead. In their hands, they wield custom-made weaponry slapped together at a hardware store.

“My character is ‘Ben’ and he’s a little shy at times,” Sheridan says. “A little shy at first and standoffish in the beginning and then he transforms into this confident, zombie-killing machine.”

Miller describes his character as the bad boy of the group: “I am the one who does not want to be a part of scouts anymore. I want to go out and party and live my life like a real man, but I’m failing miserably and I’m not as cool as I would like to be.”

Meanwhile, Morgan’s Augie is “the most boy scout-y boy scout of all boy scouts,” the actor laughs. “He’s very comfortable with himself, not embarrassed of being a high schooler and a still being a scout. He’s very comfortable with that. In fact, he doesn’t want to change, so when he finds out his friends don’t want to do scouts anymore, it breaks his heart and he really doesn’t know what to do. I like to think of him as a loner, separate from the pack and very much has his childhood innocence left in him and doesn’t want to let that go.”

“First team!” is called by the first assistant director and the three find their positions on set. Director of photography Brandon Trost and his team put the finishing touches on the lighting and camera movement. “Everyone quiet!” the first A.D. bellows. “And action!”

At video village, Landon and Trost study monitor. On screen, the scouts stand at the edge of the pool, striking hero poses with their weapons. The camera pushes past a couple of zombies gnawing on human flesh. They stop to take in these new living arrivals who hold a beat and then descend the pool’s stairs to kick some zombie ass and save their town.

Will they survive? All will be revealed when Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse arrives in theaters on October 30, 2015.