By Keri O’Shea
The influence of the zombie – formerly, the ghoul – continues to rise and rise; we now see zombies in the upper eschelons of pop culture, in such various places as a vastly-popular TV franchise and even…in a teen romance film. Yep, the risen dead are clearly here to stay. But what if, as the zombies march onward, they completely forget to appear in the very films where you’d expect them to be integral?
That’s about the size of it in What’s Left of Us, a film where an outbreak of zombies is by and large merely the context for creating an impressively claustrophobic and uneasy human situation. Charming in places, dreary in others, the film shows us its rationale for having these people trapped in a house and then goes on to develop an unexpected and brooding character study, jettisoning the more obvious sources of horror altogether. If you can forgive them that, then there is a lot to like here, actually.
Three survivors of an unspecified zombie apocalypse – the vivacious but temperamental Ana (Victoria Almeida), the outgoing Jonathan (William Prociuk) and the introverted Axel (Lautaro Delgado) – have become trapped inside a ramshackle, but fortunately well-defended house. They’re frustrated with their lot, of course, so they mutually decide on letting off steam by recording their private thoughts on video, before locking them away forever, never to be seen again. It’s a kind of pauper’s therapy, I guess. We don’t know how long they’ve been doing this exactly, but there are a hell of a lot of tapes locked away in that box. The flashpoint in this already tense situation comes when Axel, who it seems has a quiet obsession with Ana, begins to cheat: he unlocks the container, and he begins to watch the tapes, where what he sees only fuels his ardour (whilst he begins to avoid speaking to Ana in real life altogether, preferring to encounter the two-dimensional version). It’s the sort of situation in which you’d assume something has got to give: extreme isolation, simmering, unhealthy sexual rivalry, and (we presume) a shitload of the walking dead at the very door. A recipe for something explosive, right?
Well…no. Not quite. Not how you’d expect. The path chosen by director Christophe Behl in this, his first feature film, can feel frustrating in places; it’s really more of an art house movie than a horror, and choosing the frame which has been used here is clearly something of a risk, but for me, once I’d accepted the film’s unconventional use of an all-too-familiar backdrop, I rather liked it.
The film has a strange, unconventional feel to it at all times, creating a good sense of the loss of the relevance of time as we know it, whilst the actors involved enact the tedium of being holed up very well indeed. The pettiness, the boredom, the irrational tics (such as Axel gradually getting himself plastered in tiny tattoos of insects as the film progresses, promising everyone that he’ll leave the house once he’s fully covered) – it all stands up very well. Simple devices, too, such as the constant buzzing of flies which the film uses as a kind of impromptu soundtrack, really help to create a stifling, unsanitary atmosphere. Forget the walking dead outside, or even the solitary zombie ‘pet’ which Axel and Jonathan decide to bring indoors out of sheer dumb curiosity: the living that are left seem just as sickly. Glowering, unwholesome and grimy, Axel’s unrequited and rather warped love for Ana manifests itself as physical sickness; he looks terrible, though that said, all of the other, limited cast of characters take their turn at looking almost inhuman, they’re so far removed from vigour and sanity. The film chooses for its colour scheme that popular, washed-out and often blueish tone beloved of a lot of new-wave horror cinema, which may be a little obvious, but it does work here, particularly alongside the abundance of (unbearably) close shots of the inmates. It’s a stylish film, without necessarily being easy viewing.
Ultimately, the perspective taken by the film is an interesting, bold one. Little touches like the threadbare nature of Ana’s clothes; the growing tattoo; the treatment of the zombie as a kind of ‘pet’ and an art project; well, these are all effective in their way, but really the main focus of the film is on treating the outside world as an alien country. This places a particular strain on the three survivors, and keeps the focus on them, not on some grand scheme to escape, or even to save anyone else. Most films which invoke the whole zombie apocalypse and its human survivors can’t help but give us gratuitous shots of the walking dead which have caused the situation; What’s Left of Us keeps this deliberately low in the mix, providing us instead with a slow burn, unseemly but in its own way catastrophic love triangle, which plays itself out in extraordinary circumstances. The focus is very much on the human; so much so, and with such gravitas, that being undead doesn’t seem like it’s so bad after all.
A well-realised oddity, it would be a supreme and an unfortunate misfire if this film was marketed at fans of the more headshot-orientated kind of zombie flick. However, as a film which doesn’t rest very comfortably in any genre, this could be a risk for What’s Left of Us – hopefully though, more pragmatic viewers will soon find their way to this rather ambitious, atmospheric little feature.
What’s Left of Us will be released by Peccadillo Pictures on May 11th, 2015.