Francis and his family are fleeing the zombie apocalypse and arrive at his ancestral farming home. Which is actually a pretty dilapidated mansion, but hey any port in the MAGA – sorry zombie storm right? The homestead which looks straight out of a Southern gothic, seems remote enough to escape the attention of the “dead ones”, but holds a lot of trauma for Francis. Which isn’t helped when he has to deal with his undead parental units, hey gore splatter upfront we like. Along for the ride in a clapped out Toyota van is wife Iris, teenage son Josh, and younger son Lucas. The family digs in, but Iris views the farm as a resting place in a journey to the apparent safety of the nearby mountains, while Josh is at journey’s end and is going to fortify and I guess wait out the apocalypse. What could possibly go wrong?

Before people ask, I watched the English dubbed movie as I didn’t apparently have the option of subtitles and for sure wasn’t going to be able to follow the events in the movie’s native Pilipino version of Spanish. Hey we do what we have to do, and I have to say the movie is strong enough to compensate for possibly not ideal viewing perspectives. Anything lost in translation? No friggin idea team, but the visuals alone will have you humming along to this nasty little tale of insanity in the wastelands. Let’s get down and dirty and see what director Ledesma has served us up.

You know how the zombie genre is now considered out of date and last season’s event, well that memo hasn’t reached countries like the Philippines or Australia for that matter, where the genre is being taken in interesting new directions. And that is primarily what we have here, a movie that drapes itself in zombie viscera and then goes its own way. So if after yet another version of Dawn of the Dead clone, you are in the wrong place, but if you are after a slow psychological horror flick then sit your arse down on the coach, this one will have you high fiving your mummified relatives in the basement.

So yes this one works at a slow pace but gets where it is going effectively. The family arrives in a van that has seen better days, and given the bloody hand prints all over the windows the audience are made aware of what has gone down. We then gradually learn there is conflict between Francis and Iris, due to Francis not exactly keeping to the wedding vows, and left wondering if things are heading towards a redemption story. No they aren’t as the debate about should we stay or should we go escalates. They do actually try to leave but are thwarted by the undead at a bridge that dripped blood, said bridge is going to be recurrent both as a theme and an actual divide. We then get into the final act which is all about descents into madness and contains one heck of a weird plot hole. More on that later folks. 

So we do get zombies, “the dead ones”, but they work more as at plot device rather than being a clear and present danger. Director Ledesma is not really going into horror survival mode here, he is more interested in psychological horror, getting into the effect of the apocalypse rather than the apocalypse being the focal point. But we do get an interesting new take on zombies. While they are still your shambling danger, they also keep repeating the last thing they said before succumbing to the virus. Surprising this works real well on a chill finger down your spine way, there’s simply something seriously unnerving about the undead speaking.

The movie focus is on the family, and their interactions in an isolated location. Thankfully we have some interesting characters here, else things could have fallen apart real quickly. Francis is pretty traumatised by his upbringing, and in particular events that went down in the basement generator room. Things are preying on Francis’ mind and the situation is going to deterate very quickly. Meanwhile Iris is harbouring some anger over Francis having gone extra martial previously. She is on a slow burn, but is working towards forgiveness, which is kind of, no let’s be honest, is of no real interest. And the kids are being kids, slightly rebellious, but thankfully never dropping into being obnoxious, a real issue with Western movies kids.

For readers that love sub themes and symbolism in their horror movies, seriously you people really need to move out of the genre, there’s this bridge that is seemingly guarded by zombies till right at the end. Anyways beyond the bridge is apparent safety in the mountains, not entirely sure how that works but going with the flow here, so we have this bridge between chaos and normality, talk about symbolism. We never do find what is beyond the bridge but it works to limit the horizon for our hard pressed heroes, I was definitely nodding my head at the whole concept and think Carlo Ledesma nailed the concept. The ultimate resolution is the bridge, except we never travel beyond it, got to appreciate the whole thing. 

There’s one major plot hole in the movie, which pretty much takes the viewer out of the movie, and sorry kids this one is a huge spoiler so move on to the next paragraph if you haven’t seen the movie yet. During Francis’ descent into madness he takes a baseball bat to Josh, and the kid is toast, we’re talking body next to the kitchen table as time rolls along. And then magically Francis appears in one of the pivotal scenes later in the room, either Carlo Ledesma forgot about the whole baseball bat thing or we are travelling into the sort of movie that has viewers checking their watches as the metaphysics go down. Personally I just think the movie makers made a big boo with this one, anyone got a band aid?

Well we don’t review a lot of movies out of the Philippines around here, figure there must be sites covering that area of the slowly browning planet. But we had to check this one out as it was pushed to us as a zombie flick with a difference. And for sure I had a good time with the movie, it for sure has a difference which is a good thing, but it also well-acted, has an excellent plot, and for kept me entertained. Clearly full recommendation on this movie, as a horror fan if you haven’t watched this excellent flick yet then I am going to out you. Guess if you want it in a nutshell, dad goes a little insane due to the zombie apocalypse and childhood trauma, decides everyone should stay indoors, gets right irritated when it looks like someone is ducking outside, and things don’t end well.