Isaac Ezban crafts a compelling family drama in Párvulos, a Zombie thriller that takes inspiration from the fallout of a global pandemic.
Director: Isaac Ezban
Genre: Horror, Fantasy
Run Time: 118′
Fantasia Premiere: July 28, 2024
U.S. Release Date: TBA
U.K. Release Date: TBA
With Párvulos, which had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in the Cheval Noir section, writer/director Isaac Ezban and co-writer Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes create a compelling vision of a post-pandemic society, with a virus so dangerous a mutation caused by a mismatched vaccine began to turn humans into flesh-eating Zombies.
This is the basis of the movie, which follows three siblings, Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa), Benjamin (Mateo Ortega Casillias) and Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes), as they take care of their parents locked inside the basement of their house.
Their parents have turned into Zombies and caught the Omega variant of the virus that has mutated to beyond deadly levels. Of course, one can’t help but see parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had the virus kept at bay through a mass vaccination campaign, until the Omicron variant completely changed the game. The virus mutated and became ultra-contagious, infecting billions of people worldwide in mere weeks, making vaccine makers having to develop a brand-new version of their product to ensure adequate protection.
While the emergency phase of the pandemic is largely over, a new vaccine will be in the market during the respiratory virus season, and this will likely be society’s “new normal.” Thankfully, the COVID virus does not turn people into flesh-eating creatures, but with us now flying blind into a virus that continuously mutates to immune escape, one wonders exactly what society is currently doing by “letting it rip.”
Ezban doesn’t have the answer to this question, but it’s beside the point of Párvulos. These parallels to society make the film feel grounded in reality and lived-in. With a muted color palette, we’re slowly drawn into this bleak vision of a pandemic gone wrong, as we get to bond with the brothers on their quest to ‘rehabilitate’ their parents. Benjamin believes their parents can improve, after they learned to speak, but the task proves far more difficult when the arrival of a stranger (Carla Adell) changes the dynamic of the group.
Perhaps the movie is a tad too long, and the final act puts the film in an unnecessarily cruel direction, but Ezban’s direction is decidedly assured, both stylistically and thematically. A true lover of Zombie cinema, with many inspirations plucked out of George A. Romero’s body of work (are the parents Párvulos’ version of Bub from Day of the Dead? I’d like to think so), Ezban doesn’t hold back on showcasing gruesome bouts of violence so uncomfortable it may make your skin crawl. I can usually tolerate squeamish violence, but the practical effects here feel incredibly realistic, perhaps too much.
It’s also shot in a way that exacerbates both the tension and violence on display. The muted colors could help digest the gore, but when Ezban shows a Zombie spit out blood on a meatball soup, it was too much for my stomach to bear. And it’s not even the goriest part of the movie. Had it had expressive, brighter-than-red blood, it could’ve been exaggerated and caricatured.
But the color palette here makes its violence dirtier and more uncomfortable to sit through, almost as if any act of killing from the Zombie parents, or the brothers themselves, were unjustified. It makes any drawn-out scene of gore more impactful, and emotionally investing. But this wouldn’t have been made possible were it not for the rock-solid chemistry between the leads.
Above all else, Párvulos is a haunting coming-of-age tale that slowly turns darker as the siblings realize what they must do to survive. With deeply human dialogues rooting the portrayals of Benjamin, Salvador, and Oliver, all three actors give heartfelt turns and slowly begin to showcase their compassion to their dehumanized parents. Salvador is the most rational of the group, only keeping them alive by feeding them rats, but realizes that their parents are and will likely never be the same.
Benjamin and Oliver still deeply love their parents, and will do everything they can to ensure their rehabilitation, or even find a cure against their condition. Unfortunately, this is where the film begins to fall apart, as Ezban adds a new character near the climax that sets up an unnecessarily exploitative end for all protagonists. Perhaps it’s meant to show the cruelty of the post-pandemic world they live in, but it does little to satisfactorily resolve their internal and external conflict. It also stretches the runtime to interminable heights, adding more drama to a film already filled with tragedy.
But Ezban still succeeds in giving us a new vision on the Romerian Zombie that’s both unflinchingly violent and deeply human. As we know, each Romero movie had a human center at the heart of the conflict and tangible characters to attach ourselves to. Párvulos contains the exact same recipe, but elevates its violence with striking cinematography that could perhaps make it difficult for you to sleep at night. When such powerful images stay with you long after you’ve seen the film, that’s the mark of a great horror filmmaker, whose career will hopefully find greater heights after the movie’s release.
Párvulos premiered at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 28, 2024.
