Writer, director, composer, and editor (!) Antonio Tublen laudably manages to come up with a somewhat new spin on the well-worn genre by… featuring almost no zombies at all in his highly theatrical, contained take on the zombie apocalypse, Zoo. He uses the undead as a metaphor for marital woes, the rapidly-spreading Armageddon a catalyst for stagnating emotions. In that respect, he succeeds; too bad he can’t quite figure out if he’s making a horror flick, an affecting drama, a theatrical pastiche, a dark comedy, or all of the above. The concoction may have worked in the hands of a more assured filmmaker, but while he touches upon real ingenuity here and there, Tublen’s lurching from one emotionally-charged sequence to a ludicrously over-the-top scene to a meandering one is too jarring to gel. As reports of a viral outbreak flood the news, childless and barren London-couple Karen and John (Zoë Tapper and Ed Speleers) are on the verge of splitting up. Before Karen has the chance to utter, “I want to give it a pause,” a plane crashes through a nearby building, sending the neighborhood into zombie-chomping chaos. All of this is glimpsed briefly, our couple wasting no time barricading themselves inside their apartment. They ration their baked beans and ketchup; they stock up on knives, hammers, aerosol spray and flour (to blind an attacker, of course); they loot neighbors’ homes; they work out; and they mark their windows with X’s, in hopes of being rescued. They also kill time playing cards, watching movies, and doing copious amounts of cocaine. Throughout all this, they discuss their relationship, unraveling new things about each other. The arrival of neighbors Leo and Emily (Jan Bijvoet and Antonia Campbell-Hughes) leads to a power play (involving competitive dry humping) that gets increasingly violent. With food supplies low, Karen particularly shows an unexpected dark side, ordering the hapless couple around. “You realize that this is gonna come down to them… or us,” Emily – who’s delegated to washing dishes and sorting socks – whispers to Leo. This leads to amphetamine-laced cookies, murder, ecstasy-fueled sex, a near-rape, and a near-suicide. Lots to handle then, and, taken separately, there are bits to treasure. The (very few) zombie attacks are unexpected, jolting, and hilarious. I liked the couple’s nonchalant response to the impending doom, themselves numb to the world, resembling zombies. Tublen touches upon some probing themes: striving for more than just domestic comfort (Karen realizes that she’s appreciative of her life, but “the hunger” still “takes over”); overcoming grief; and achieving salvation by way of sacrifice. A nuanced, particularly effective “what if” dialogue between Karen and John during the finale made me wish Tublen stuck to one gun, instead of holstering a dozen. It’s almost like the filmmaker had a superb little dramatic short that he decided to expand into a multi-genre, low-budget hybrid, to its ultimate detriment. Meandering scenes overstay their welcome, things are spelled out over and over – Ryan Reynolds-starrer Buried, which took place in a single coffin, had more tension than Zoo. There’s another interesting, subversive little note that Tublen flirts with in Zoo. The two main women in the film are portrayed as determined, passionate, and lively, while the men are passive and somewhat vacuous. “Is this what you teach your students?” Karen says to John sarcastically. “That everything will be okay?” She doesn’t need comfort or reassurance, and it seems – what she wants is to be freed, the unexpected, turned on by John’s drug abuse and murder. At the end of the day, Tublen seems to be saying, “we’re all animals in this f*****g zoo.” I just wish that, like most zoos, his film had a better map.
Zoo (2019) Written and Directed by Antonio Tublen. Starring Zoë Tapper, Ed Speelers, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Jan Bijvoet, Lucas Loughran. 6 out of 10
title: “Zoo Featured Check Reviews Film Threat” ShowToc: true date: “2024-05-10” author: “Francis Kies”
Amos (Amos Nzamba) is part of a gang of three misfits aimlessly driving through a small Canadian town looking for trouble. Amos opens the film lamenting the situation he finds himself in with Slim (Brendan Sheehan) and Santos (Ian Contreras). In his head, he wonders how he got into this “bullish!t” and tells himself every night that he needs to get out. On this particular night, the boys stalk fast-food drive-thrus stealing meals as they are being passed from the diner’s window to the customer. The night comes to a screeching halt when they discover they are out of rolling papers for their weed, and Amos makes the mistake of asking for papers from the wrong car.
Zoo parallels the tragic nature of our stories in film alongside the tragic nature of real-life for black communities around the world. In Amos’s case, simple acts of stupidity can end in tragedy and then contrast with the hopeless nature of his life’s direction. Amos finds himself caught up in endless cycles that may one day also end in disaster. Zoo is not only expertly shot and tells a compelling story, but writer/ director Niava absolutely nails the tone right from start to finish. Tone is everything in this story as it places us in the right setting with the right mood, and immediately we are connected with Amos’ plight and path to nowhere.
