"Párvulos: Hijos del Apocalipsis" (Sons of the Apocalypse), and how to do a region 4 low budget zombie film.

There is something trully surprising and special when you live in a country where the only film production is concentrated on lazy written romantic comedies, infantiloid horror flicks and supposedly intelectual art films where nothing happens, and suddenly you see in the cinema that there is something else. In this case, a zombie apocaliptic movie that promised a lot of gore, boddy horror and a latinamerican idiosyncrasy. And, it kind of delivers.

Párvulos: Hijos del Apocalipsis [Parvulos: Sons of the Apocalipse] is the story of three brothers that live in the middle of a forest in a post-apocaliptic world full of zombies (or at least that is what they say), dangerous religious fanatics and scarce food. Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa)is the oldest brother and has one leg amputated, Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes) is the middle one that is mostly very frightened but helps Salvador to not loose his sh*t, and Benjamin (Mateo Ortega Casillas) the younger who only knows this world. They try to survive at the same time they keep this monster on the basement, but when Benjamin discovers is their mom (Norma Flores) and dad (Horacio F. Laz ), he is willing to do whatever it takes to bring them back to their older selfs.

The film plays his cards really well, knows its limitations and try, with multiple degrees of achievement, to turn around them. The story is well contained in a couple locations with minimal screen time, a forest, and the biggest part of the story occurs in this single house. This allows to the production design to really put all the meat in the grill (all its eggs in the same basket) and achieve to make this place stand out. It still looks kind of fake, as good low (or high) budget mexican movie must look, but it has personality.

The cinematography does its best to make this film quite interesting on a visual manner. The use of certain overexposed lights and high contrast convey an eerie and desolate sensation. There is also the fact that all colors are so desaturades that almost achieves a black and white look, but the things that return them to the past (like the movie they watch or the vynil record they listen all the time) are colored with saturated colors. Is kind of Schindler´s List, but here reminds us of the little things that the characters, and also us would, value in this devastated world. The only thing that I found kind of desconcerting is certain shots, with no pattern I could descypher, and I tried during the whole movie, are filmed with anamorfic big angular lenses that deforms the image. I mean, it is cool and stylized, but, in an otherwise so thinked visual proposition, this feels gratituos and just for the sake of it.

Also, the use of drone shots, original songs composed for the characters to hear and dance to, a good make-up design for the zombies and a clothing department that plays all its cards really well to make something unique give this film a sensation of being big. At least in this superficial manner, the film is closer to a well financed cinematic expierence that to the typical artsy and student experimental film you could found. Yet, there are still some clear limitations. On a more unconcious manner you notice that there are almost no actors, which make this apocaliptic flick supposeddly full of zombies and dangers in reality a forest with two aprehended zombies and three other survivors. Also, when you notice that there is a lot of reiteration of the same elements and the characters mostly talk about what happened, it becomes almost cringe how miserably are they trying to get the last drop of the lemons they have, lemons with no more juice that you are now only consuming the skin.

All this is mostly forgiven thanks to the screenplay. There are some ideas very well achieved. Centering the story on a single broken family that is trying to return to a better time, in opposition to a high adventure and action film, keeps the movie centered and well emotionally focused. Every one of the three brothers have a distinctive personality, appearance and gimmick, which allows them to be easily differentiated and have some sort of character arch.

Even with this, there are things to improve. The characters become too one-noted and without much depth when you already saw them repeat the exactly same dynamic three or four times just in the first act. This leads to the surprise-treated revelation that works as the inciting incident, that gets the movie moving forward, to take sooooooo long to arraive. Every complication is immediately solved in the next scene, so there is not really a conflict escalation, and the one there is, is painfully predictable. And, because of the writter-director (Isaac Ezban) is so in love with his worldbuilding and could not let anything unexplained, there is a lot of verbal exposition, which does not help the not so natural sounding dialogues of the characters, that is not relevant and just destroy the mystery of what happened to this broken world. This expands to the point of many important information and plot points of the movie being just talked about, and there is not the slightest try to back this up; writter is just like "trust me, please". And, as the cherry on top, the movie opens and closes in "full circle" with voice off exposition of a character kind of recounting the theme of the film through a poor thought metaphor that prevents any thought and reflexion the end could have left the audience with.

This is kind of worsen by the direction. It is simple, effective, transmits the narrative clearly, but it lacks any originality besides panning in stablishing shots. Ezban depends so much on what is written that the characters said, that the movie is far away of trying to transmit any idea visually, cinematographically the picture is just going from point A to point B. In the middle there are other issues as some bits extremely long, and a tone with an ever inconsistent pattern. In some moments the movie is too serious, everything feels solem and the characters mistakes do weight on them, and other times it feels kind of exagerated and melodramatic, with some scenes (as zombies "riding" each other or revealing chest tattoos) drawn directly from parody movies; the same occurs with the gore, is not clear it its purpose is as shock value or with comedic aspirations. Yet, is clearly that this story, character dynamic and aesthetic elements do resonate with the director, so even when it feels like he is not experience enough to make the best version of this movie, his heart is in the right place.

At last, it is not a perfect movie. Has good things as production values, a stylized visual aspect and a very clear emotional center. There are some improve-needing things, as the overuse of exposition, inconsistent tone and some aspects of the narrative. Nonetheless, in a very monotonous cinematic atmosphere, to watch someone truly passionate do something different is something worth of, unlike the lack of zombies in the movie, bitting in.