BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

Just as it's about to wear out its one-joke premise, the horror mockumentary "American Zombie" deepens, grows complicated and even gets pretty scary.

It's a poker-faced satire in which director Grace Lee - whose "Grace Lee Project" saw her tracking down women who shared her name - and her idiot friend from film school, John Solomon, try to portray "high-functioning zombies" as a misunderstood minority who are just like anybody else, except dead.

But what starts out as a typically liberal plea for acceptance and equal rights slowly turns into something much darker, a metaphor for American paranoia at its hysterical worst - and, perhaps, its most justified. No one here gets out alive, or at least without being implicated in some kind of delusional prejudice, smug documentary filmmakers least of all. Lee and Solomon are hilariously passive-aggressive with one another ("Nobody wants to see `The Grace Lee Project 2,' " he says as the director keeps turning the camera on herself). And the key zombie players are all terrific, as are the film's funky/downscale L.A. locations.

>Bob Strauss

AMERICAN ZOMBIE

Not rated: violence, language.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood.