Bullet Points: ZETA: When the Dead Awaken (2019)
Horror movies have always had a real knack for shining a spotlight on the way our society operates. Both the good and the bad. Zombie movies, in particular, have been able to keep their collective fingers on the pulse of the planet and deliver stories which tell us more about ourselves than just how we might react to a rising of the dead. George Romero is very much to thank for this but he isn’t alone and I would contend that his legacy lives on with directors today.
Synopsis: Deon witness a strange incident when a friend he beats suddenly bites the nurse’s neck and becomes a cannibal. After that, the attacks from the zombies happen quickly at school and on the streets, so Deon picks up his mother, Isma, in Teratai Asri apartment. Deon and his mother are trapped inside the apartment while other residents has fled. Meanwhile at the Five Military Base, Colonel Vito welcomes Richard, Deon’s father, a scientist, who discovered the origin of the outbreak: originating from the evolution of an amoeba parasite named Naegleria-ross zeta, and that the Zeta serum he had created located in Teratai Asri apartment. Colonel Vito decides that their team visit a zombie killer gang called Blue River to get the best combat strategy against the zombies. Deon also tries to fight the zombies who attack the apartment. Written by filmindonesia.or.id
- What we put into the world will be returned to us: The film opens with this line and you have to assume already that this zombie outbreak is going to be caused by us lowly humans. We aren’t the best living on our own planet and I guess it was only a matter of time before we totally screwed it up. Although, if this is one of those thinking zombie films then it has to be about the decisions we make as people. I guess we’ll find out.
- Opening credits: I’ve always appreciated when a film doesn’t waste the couple of minutes during the opening credits and instead delivers some tasty B-roll exposition to our story. Before any of the characters ever make it onto the screen I already know what kind of chaos we’re in for. Bravo!
- Deon: Actor Jeff Smith plays Deon, a high schooler who comes home from school one day at the exact moment his parents split up. A couple of years later and he’s always getting into fights at school and his relationship with his mom (who has Alzheimer’s) is about as bad as it could be. His father is always off working so that relationship isn’t the best either, but young Deon and his mother have barely spoke since he learned of her affair.
- Surviving the initial collapse: It felt like a long time but in reality the zombie outbreak happens pretty fast in the film. The first we see of it is at Deon’s school. He ends up making it out of the building and heads towards his mother’s apartment through all of the chaos on the streets. The zombies aren’t the slow Romero ones or the super fast Zack Snyder ones but something in between. Deon actually does a pretty good job with the initial shock of it all. He gets his hands on a baseball bat, makes a sign for any potential rescuers, and searches around for food and medicine in a nurse’s apartment.
- Making friends and learning stuff: The sign ended up paying off as another survivor makes his way to the mother’s place and holes up the two. He ends up having a connection to a guerrilla group that we learn about a little earlier and it basically backfires for Deon and his mom. They do, however, learn all about the zombies (or zetas- both alpha and omega) and acquire some guns for use later.
- Leave my brain alone: The zetas seem like less of a threat than zombies in many other films. They are somehow able to see our brain function and Deon’s mom is left untouched because of her condition. There is also a dude who had some traumatic brain injury who can just cruise around safely. Sadly, the film starts to stall out as Deon, his mom, their buddy, and his asshole brother worry about things that shouldn’t matter. It isn’t long before everything breaks down and they are all left to fend for themselves.
- Government sucks: I don’t want Big Brother making decisions for me and I damned sure don’t want them creating living dead creatures! We learned that some sort of contaminated water source started this whole mess and we follow along with some military dudes and a scientist throughout the film as they attempt to get some much needed documents that are supposed to help fix this whole thing. Keep your grubby little government hands out of our lives and this never would have happened!
The Verdict: ZETA doesn’t try to redefine the zombie genre and it doesn’t do anything that overwhelmingly stands out as groundbreaking. What it does do is it effectively builds its characters into people who seem to live in the ‘real world’. They don’t make countless awful decisions and spend the entire film running from their mistakes. Deon and his mother aren’t heroes out to save the country from the infection. In fact, they’re mostly out to save themselves. But more than just the characters, they’re living metaphors for humanity and the familial bond between mother and son. There’s also something to be said about the governments involvement with the infection, as well. In the end, ZETA doesn’t do anything wrong while also hitting all those marks that you would expect from a well-made zombie film. If you only know Indonesian films because of The Raid series then it might be time to introduce yourself to ZETA. I just wish it had more exploding heads…..
