Haiti's history meets teen romance in Bertrand Bonello's nitwit flick, ZOMBI CHILD

I've been a fan of the films of Bertrand Bonello (shown below) for years now -- Nocturama and Saint Laurent are my favorites -- so it gives me no pleasure to report that his latest, ZOMBI CHILD, is an embarrassing, unadulterated piece of crap. Unless M. Bonello is simply having us on? If so, he's managed to con most of our critical establishment, no great achievement considering the current state of movie criticism. It is not that his film has no real scares, suspense or thrills, as do most films with the word zombie (or, as here, zombi) in the title. Nor that instead of those usual attributes, a filmmaker has skewed his work toward intelligence and politics, economics, and history. Robin Campillo managed all that just about perfectly in his zombie movie, They Came Back (Les Revenants).

Here, the history of Haiti, colonization, teenage infatuation, zombie love and other subjects bounce off each other repeatedly without ever making much of a connection -- intellectually or emotionally. It takes over an hour before that connection finally arrives. And once it does, the movie just grows stupider.

TrustMovies is sorry, but it is simply not enough to toss in everything you think you know about these subjects and then expect this to somehow coalesce. You've got to make your tale resonate in an edifying manner so that your characters seem at least a tad important, maybe even believable. Bonello utterely fails at this. Plus, he's unusually sloppy (our Haitian zombie forgets to move slowly, once he's washing himself in the river).

The movie, despite its intellectual pretensions, does not even qualify as subtle or smart, for it is simply exposition piled upon more exposition, until it arrives dead on its feet -- in a way that puts to shame its own zombies.

Toggling back and forth between Haiti in the 1960s -- as one of those zombies is created to join others in the sugar-cane work force -- and an elite girls' school in present-day France, where the entitled white students form cliques and discuss boys, music and sorority nonsense, deciding whether or not to allow a new black student to join, Zombi Child moves along at the pace of the old-fashioned undead. To and fro we go, from Haiti to France, with things occasionally broken up by a nightmare or a flesh-eating fantasy. Come on, Bonello, we know you can do better than this.

Even the film's minimal special effects are cheesy -- black eyeballs yet?! -- while the finale offers up the most embarrassing use of Rodgers & Hammerstein's You'll Never Walk Alone to ever hit the screen. It makes even the ending of the movie Priest seem unduly reticent.

I am tempted to call this film a piece of intentional camp. But, no, I know in my heart that the camp here in unintentional. More's the pity.

From Film Movement and running 103 very long minutes, Zombi Child hits DVD and digital today, Tuesday, May 19 -- for purchase and, I would guess, rental. Your move.

Stream this year's Christmas hit: John McPhail's ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE

Likely to become a holiday classic -- thanks to its delightful and original combination of high school musical, zombie pic and Christmas movie -- ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE snuck into theaters in limited release at the end of last year (garnering some very nice reviews in the process) and is now available to stream via Amazon Prime. The movie's a winner, a keeper, and an all-round wonder as it unfurls its very charming, funny and bizarre "take" on high school, love, friendship, Christmas pageants and zombies. Really, this is the best zombie movie since Train to Busan and the best original musical in several years (for my money it beats the too-precious La La Land all to heck).

As directed with a remarkably intuitive sense of tone and tenor by John McPhail (at left) and co-written -- with not just exceptional "smarts" but also an appreciation of and love for the genres they send up and add to -- by Alan McDonald and the late Ryan McHenry (to whom the work is dedicated), this little film finds its footing so quickly and securely that I suspect film buffs will recall it fondly and lovingly when many other more trumpeted, high-budget movies will have long faded from memory.

The story is simple and initially rather sweet. As Anna and her loving dad drive along the highway discussing Anna's future (for which they each have a different plan), on the radio we hear, "The CDC has announced that what it initially thought to be a contagious--", at which point Anna switches the radio off, and we continue with high school and teenagers, the trauma of growing up, falling in love (of course with the wrong person), and putting on the yearly Christmas pageant. Talk about a pointed but relatively subtle manner in which to introduce the expectation of zombies -- and then having the chutzpah to simply leave them offscreen for quite some time!

By the time we do see them, Anna (Ella Hunt, above center) and her friends are so immersed in teenage narcissism and song (a lovely, funny one, too) that they don't even notice the undead cavorting in their slow, zombie fashion behind them. (These zombies adhere to the better, slower George Romero version, which allows for a lot more leeway, escape routes and fun.)

Anna's friends include her "bestie," John (a sweet Malcolm Cumming (above, center), who clearly loves Ella in more than a best-friend way, and student investigative journalist Steph (no-nonsense Sarah Swire, at left, below),

and especially the school bully, Nick (Ben Wiggins, below), who turns out to have a bit more on the ball than bullies in other films. Wiggins also gets a great song midway along that reinforces how cleverly Anna and the Apocalypse plays with the genre conventions of zombie movies, high-school rom-coms, Christmas movies and so much else.

The supporting cast is terrific, too, with Paul Kay, below, left, as the succulently sleazy school headmaster, and Mark Benton, below, right, the very picture of a kindly, loving, over-protective dad.

Who survives and who does not may surprise you, and this certainly adds to the film's thrills and sometimes to its sadness. (As one of the songs tells us, "There's no such thing as a Hollywood ending.") I can't remember when a zombie movie made me laugh and touched me in the way this one does, yet even the moving moments don't seem too sentimental. They're all delivered with a wit and a style that seduce. (Who'd imagine a Christmas candy cane as a prime zombie-killing tool?)

Marli Siu (above) makes a sweet secondary love interest for the school's nerdy-but-nice photographer, a funny, on-the-mark Christopher Leveaux (below, center left). The musical numbers range from very good to OK, with more of the former than the latter, and they are produced and executed so well that they seem utterly organic to the rest of the film. In a movie that mashes this many genres, that took some doing.

Oh, yes, there's gore, too. This is a zombie film, after all. But even the blood is handled with the same kind of smart tone and subtlety as all else here. Boy, what a special little movie this is!

Streaming now via Amazon Prime, and also available for rental or purchase on DVD and Blu-ray, Anna and the Apocalypse is simply too good to miss. It'll take its place with other fine, dark Christmas movies, for folk who need a respite from the current feel-good holiday twaddle filling our network TV, cable and streaming services.

Looking for a genuinely different zombie film? Try Shinichiro Ueda's ONE CUT OF THE DEAD

Yeah, yeah: You keep hearing about "really different zombie films," particularly zombie comedies -- of which we've already seen plenty, from Shaun of the Dead through Stalled and way beyond (in fact, Jim Jarmusch's try at this subgenre arrives on DVD/VOD this very week). And while it's true that the new film under consideration here -- ONE CUT OF THE DEAD -- is indeed a zombie comedy, it is so different in so many ways from the usual pack that TrustMovies believes it merits the attention of film buffs and maybe even that of zombie-movie lovers.

As you may know if you follow this blog, I am no fan of zombies -- the most boring "monsters" movie-land has so far created. In the old days they looked a little spooky and walked so slowly you could tiptoe away from them with no problem whatsoever. These days they either move slowly (as in the grand-daddy of the modern zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead) or fast, and they, yes, "feast on the flesh of the living." Big deal. Werewolves can change their whole appearance while scaring us silly, and vampires make a great metaphor for forbidden sex. But zombies? Real Johnny-One-Notes, they bore us to distraction.

All of the which makes this 2017 film -- written, directed and edited by Shinichiro Ueda (shown two photos above) a nice, if rather long gestating, surprise. And so I must beg you, should you take a chance on this movie, please last out through the longueurs of the first third, which will seem like a rather standard, if silly zombie film, and through the second section, which more or less explains how that first section will soon come into being, and to hold out until the final third -- which is truly unusual: genuinely funny, sweet and charming as all hell. (My spouse gave up midway through the movie, and so missed what I now know he would, given his taste and humor, have really loved.)

More than this, plot-wise, I ought not say. Spoilers, you know. But the more we learn about the characters in the movie-within-the-movie, and about the actors who play them and about all the folk laboring behind the scenes, One Cut of the Dead just grows better and better.

The whole cast is delightful -- by the finale appearing, oh, so different from what you initially perceived -- and Mr. Ueda is to be congratulated on his moxie for coming up with an idea this bizarre and then bringing it to decent fruition. Given what that idea is, I don't really see how he could have avoided those aforementioned longueurs. And his final section proves so much fun that I think you'll easily forgive him. I sure did.

Released via Shudder, in association with Variance Films, One Cut of the Dead -- running 96 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles -- opens in New York City (at IFC Center) and Los Angeles (at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown) today, Friday, September 13, after which it will play at over 60 one-night screenings across the US and Canada, slated for Tuesday, September 17 (click here to see all currently scheduled screenings), with additional ones to follow and more being added daily. Eventually, I would imagine, you'll be able to see the film on the Shudder streaming service.

ENDZEIT: EVER AFTER -- Carolina Hellsgård & Olivia Vieweg's lovely zombie collaboration

If the term lovely seems misplaced in describing a zombie movie, well, you've just got to see ENDZEIT: EVER AFTER to fully appreciate how oddly appealing and attractive is this new film directed by Carolina Hellsgård with a screenplay by Olivia Vieweg, from her own graphic novel.

Oh, sure, there are the requisite zombies running around, attacking the living and eating their flesh, but there's relatively little of this, compared with the usual genre movies -- and what there is is handled smartly, with some graphic subtlety and enough suspense and surprise to pass muster.

Ms Hellsgård (shown at right) and Ms Vieweg have certainly given the film a feminist slant, with its three main characters all women, the main two of which (Gro Swantje Kohlhof and Maja Lehrer, shown below, left and right, respectively) make an odd couple who must finally bond and help each other through some very trying times. Both the two characters and the actresses who play them seem nicely in sync with the movie's themes and arc. They play off each other very well and end up growing close to each other, just as they bind the audience firmly to their spirit and plight.

In addition to its feminism, the film offers a strong humanist slant -- even as it condemns humanity for the destruction of the earth. (Just as in the current South Korean Netflix series, Kingdom, think of these zombies as a kind of appropriate revenge upon the callous, unfeeling politicians and power brokers of our world, even though we never meet the bad guys up close, as we do in Kingdom.)

The story here is fairly simple and minimal. All of Germany (perhaps the entire world) has been destroyed by the zombie plague -- except for two cities evidently smart and fast enough to fortify themselves. From one of these -- in which anyone infected is immediately killed -- the two girls hope to escape to the other, in which a cure is still sought so that at least some of the infected may be spared.

During the girl's travels we get occasional zombie interference, brief but pleasing respites, some lovely and verdant scenery, and a good amount of time spent in the local forest, during which we meet the third important character. She is played by that crackling good Danish actress Trine Dyrholm (above, right, of Becoming Astrid, Nico 1988 and The Commune), and her character -- about which I will say little -- has to do with nature and the earth's ability to maybe care for itself in a way that may remind you a bit of last year's dour waste, Annihilation, but with little of that film's pomposity, ridiculous/endless special effects and millions-of-dollars budget.

Much of Endzeit's charm, I suspect, is due to its humble stance. The production design -- interiors and exteriors -- is terrific, clearly on quite a low budget, while the rest of the technical aspects are handled just as well.

I do wish that the final appearance of one of our three characters showed a bit more in the way of wear-and-tear, given what we only recently saw the poor girl have to endure. I know a happy ending is usually a help, but please. Perhaps the finale is meant to be like waking from a bad dream?

From Juno Films, running just 90 minutes and in German with English subtitles, Endzeit: Ever After opens this Friday, June 21, in New York City at the IFC Center. In Los Angeles, look for it at Laemmle theaters: on June 27 at the Ahrya Fine Arts, on June 28 at the Royal and Glendale, and on June 30 at the Playhouse 7. Other playdates? Can't find any listed. But even if you're not on our two coastal movie capitals, eventually this one ought to find its way onto home video/digital.

Virus-cum-zombies is back: Bo Mikkelsen's classy but derivative WHAT WE BECOME

Here we go again. Though it always seems, while watching a zombie movie, that no one on screen, or anywhere in the world for that matter, has ever before witnessed a movie or TV show about zombies. (Of course not, yet a new one debuts almost weekly.) So here we are getting yet another genre movie about a sudden out-of-nowhere virus wreaking havoc on a town and turning its citizens into -- wait: are you ready for this? -- flesh-eating zombies. Omigod, what an unusual premise! Still, there is something different about WHAT WE BECOME, the movie opening this week: It's in Danish, so you get subtitles with your gore.

TrustMovies is of two minds about What We Become -- written and directed by Bo Mikkelsen (shown at left). On one hand, Mr. Mikkelsen has delivered a rather classy treatment, with decent dialog and direction, plus a first-rate Danish cast, including Mille Dinesen (below, right), who starred in that terrific Danish TV series, Rita. The film offers a good deal of tension and suspense, occasional surprise, and something that approaches the requisite blood-and-gore quotient. (If it goes a bit light on the latter, this is fine by me, considering how many films in the overwrought and way overworked zombie genre we critics have by now been forced to sit through.)

On the other hand, however, this is about as utterly derivative a virus-produces-zombies movie that you could want (or reject). One scene after another echoes stuff we've seen too many times previous -- beginning with the original (and still un-topped) Night of The Living Dead.

The film begins, as so many of these now do, at very nearly its conclusion, which provides a grabber of an opening then flashes back a bit, so that, in passing, we hear the usual TV news story about people growing ill from some yet-to-be-diagnosed malady, which alerts us to just about everything to come. This would include the film's finale, which steals directly from one of the pivotal and best scenes of that famous and seminal George Romero movie.

The government of course gets immediately involved in things, while lying through its teeth, as governments are wont to do. And we get to know a couple of families in the little town of Sorgenfri, (which doubles as the Danish name of this movie) and come to like them just well enough to feel a little sad at their inevitable upcoming demise.

Unlike another, better and also-subtitled zombie movie -- Germany's Rammbock, which conflated the zombie genre with the confined-space movie to produce something more riveting than usual for the walking dead -- What We Become is content to roll out the tried-and-true in a slightly more well-made manner. (There's a scene here involving a baby's crib that is surprisingly restrained.)

The teenage son of one family gets involved with the girl next door (across the street, actually), as mom and dad argue about what might be the best approach to all the oddity going on around them. The film's best and most original scene involves that son, investigating things on his own and discovering more of what's going on, while unfortunately undoing most of the good that the authorities have so far put into place.

Finally the question arises, as it often does in this genre, Haven't the characters pictured here ever seen a zombie movie? If so, they're awfully slow to catch on. If not, this would imply a world in which zombie movies do not exist. Sweet Jesus -- if only!

From IFC Midnight and running a thankfully short 81 minutes, What We Become opens this Friday, May 13, in New York City at the IFC Center (midnight screenings only) and in Los Angeles at Hollywood's Arena Cinema. If you don't live in thee two cultural capitals, worry not: The movie arrives simultaneously across the country on VOD.

Rob Kuhns' BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD: Everything you wanted to know about the original flesh-eating-zombie movie

Imitations and homages may come and go but there is still only one true and great "modern" zombie movie: Night of the Living Dead, the transgressive -- politically and moviewise -- 1968 chiller/thriller/
horror/gore-fest from George A. Romero. A young filmmaker named Rob Kuhns (shown below) had the fine idea to interview Mr. Romero (about how the movie came to be) along with others (about what the movie means), and the result is a first-rate documentary -- BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD -- that should please zombie fans, cult movie lovers and literally anyone who feels, as does TrustMovies, that Romero's film remains, in its own special way, something seminal and important to the history of motion pictures (and I do not mean only horror movies).

As captured by Kuhns' direction and editing, Mr. Romero, shown below and now 73, turns out to be a charming raconteur: intelligent, relatively humble (as filmmakers go), funny but never glib, with a good memory and a real delight in recalling the old days and how they went down. Mr. Kuhns has rounded up a fine array of talking heads, too -- from horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden (shown further below) to producer Gale Anne Hurd, critics Elvis Mitchell and Jason Zinoman, and film historian Mark Harris, along with some of the actors like Bill Hinzman who doubled and tripled in other jobs on the film set and who are still alive. (Mr. Hinzman gets a lovely post-credit sequences at a mall event celebrating--what else?--zombies.)

Mostly though, it's Romero who guides us through the thicket of the past, how the initial idea came about and grew, how money was raised, first to film that idea and then do the technical work necessary to ready the film for release. In order to find enough funds to finish the sound track (as I recall, it was the sound track), one of the actors/workers bet a fellow who owned a sound studio that he could beat him in a chess match. He did.

Some of the anecdotes we hear along the way are wonderfully funny and surprising. (Who knew that Mr. Rogers had any connection to the world's most famous zombie movie?) And some are simply sad. (Want to make a guess as to how rich everyone connected to this groundbreaking movie became -- along with the reason why not?)

The 76-minute length of the documentary simply flies by, and I can hardly think of anything I'd want to have seen left on the cutting room floor. From this film we get -- as the original movie itself has always given us -- politics, race, taboos and other cultural touchstones.

Via scenes from the film, as well as from some nifty illustrations (shown above), we can relive our initial shock and fear all over again, this time with a smile always flickering around our faces. (That's Mr. Hinzman -- above in illustration and below on film -- as the initial zombie encountered in the graveyard.)

One of the most flat-out enjoyable documentaries of the year, Birth of the Living Dead, from First Run Features, had a short theatrical release a few months back, and will make its DVDebut this coming Tuesday, January 7. As with many FRF releases, I think we can expect it to appear on streaming sources eventually.

Christian James and Dan Palmer's witty STALLED offers fabulous fun by co-joining the contained-space and zombie genres

Surely by now it must be clear -- what with those AMC Walking Dead zombies having slo-moed their way into the mainstream and the [REC] series offering its best and also funniest of its film via number 3 -- that the zombie genre is now mainly fit for (mostly) fun. When a so-so example like World War Z is greeted with critical hosannas and big box-office, it is sadly certain that no real reinvention (other than making zombies funny) is in the cards anytime soon. All of which is to say that the British and very low-budget movie STALLED comes on like a breath of fresh air in this increasingly stale genre. (It even -- see alternate poster below -- has the audacity to make fun of the only really good effect in all of World War Z.)

As directed by Christian James and written by Dan Palmer (who also portrays the lead character), Stalled has the very smart idea of joining two genres: the zombie movie and the confined-space thriller (Brake, Devil, Buried, etc.). This combination works amazingly well -- mostly because Stalled is much more a comedy than a horror film (although the blood and gore rise to a rather high level). The title itself should bring a smile to your face, as it refers to the hero of the film, a maintenance man in a hi-rise building who gets stuck in a toilet stall in the women's lavatory during an office Christmas party, just at the moment when -- and isn't it always like this -- the zombie apocalypse breaks out.

Mr. James, shown at left, and his lovely cast have a lot of fun initially toying with the intellectual level of these zombie -- which is probably no more or less than in most other films, but here is played for some terrific, low-key laughter. There's a subplot about a tool box stuffed with money, which we realize will figure in during the course of things. Having the Christmas-party guests in costume is yet another inspired choice for some further humor. Mr. James also knows how to pace a Zombie movie very well. But mostly, it's the genuinely funny and often surprising writing from Mr. Palmer that keeps the movie rolling fast, along with his ability to fill the screen-play with numerous and pointed events, even though we're confined to a toilet. (Better yet, these events are not poop/pee-related, but rather help move the story along and keep us giggling.)

The dialog is pretty funny, too. ("Come and get it!" has perhaps never taken on such disgusting delight.) Along the way, Mr. Palmer (above and below) also dishes up one of the dirtiest jokes ever to grace a movie -- involving ear-piercing, parents, and a computer.

Around the time we get to disco dancing in the toilet -- and a cream-of-the-crop fantasy sequence that follows it -- you will have not simply suspended your disbelief but gleefully stomped all over it. The one caveat I have is that some of the dialog, with its thick British accent, got by me. (We could have used English subtitles, but the movie offers none.)

The use of Christmas carols on the soundtrack is done with utmost charm and care and there are some lovely little touches along the way that are actually rather sweet. Get ready for a couple of ace surprises here, too. And when the end credits roll, don't click off, as there's a smart post-credit sequence in store for those who wait.

Really: What can any halfway intelligent filmmaker do with the zombie genre any longer -- except play it for laughs? That said, there's unlikely to be anything much funnier for quite some time than Stalled. (The film initially appears to have been titled "Cubicle Hero," which ain't a bad name, either.)

The movie, running a brisk 85 minutes, is available now via Netflix streaming and Amazon Instant Video.