Director – Carles Torrens, Screenplay – Angel Agudo, Based on the Novel Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (2007) by Manel Loureiro, Producers – Adrian Guerra & Nuria Vallis, Photography – Edu Canet Ciscar & Elias M. Felix, Music – Federico Jusid, Visual Effects Supervisor – Carlos Zaera, Visual Effects – Orca Studios, Special Effects Supervisor – Pau Costa, Makeup Effects – May Effects (Supervisors – Pablo Perona & Lucia Solana), Production Design – Balter Gallart. Production Company – Nostromo Pictures.
Cast
Francisco Ortiz (Manel), Jose Maria Yazpik (Viktor Pritchenko), Amalia Gomez (Gabriela), Berta Vazquez (Lucia), Marta Poveda (Belen), Iria Del Rio (Julia), Yuri Mykhaylychenko (Ushakov), Maria Salgueiro (Sister Cecilia)
Plot
It is one year after the death of Manel’s wife Julia in a car accident. All across Europe, there are reports of outbreaks of the TSJ virus with some countries closing their borders. Just as Manel plans to leave Galicia to take refuge with Julia’s sister Belen in the Canary Islands, the airport is closed. There is a sudden outbreak of zombies. Belen’s husband warns Manel that he should avoid the mandatory evacuation and he elects to stay behind. The problem then becomes one of finding enough supplies. Manel joins forces with an elderly wheelchair-ridden woman Gabriela who has been left behind and raids abandoned homes for supplies. Manel then learns of a ship about to leave for the Canary Islands and decides to set out across the zombie-infested city to get there.
This is an adaptation of the Spanish best-selling book Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (2007) by Manel Loureiro. Lureiro has written two sequels with Apocalypse Z #2: Dark Days (2010) and Apocalypse Z #3: The Wrath of the Just (2011). As with the book series, The Beginning of the End ends on a cliffhanger clearly intended to lead into potential adaptations of the other two books. The film comes from director Carles Torrens had previously made the horror films Emergo (2011) and Pet (2016).
The
Zombie Film underwent a major upsurge in the mid-2000s with efforts such as Resident Evil (2002), 28 Days Later (2002), the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Shaun of the Dead (2004) and then tv’s The Walking Dead (2010-22), all of which led to a vast outpouring of copies. Many of these turned to comedy and spoof title mashups in a quest for novelty. However, by the end of the 2010s, there was the general feeling that most creative possibilities available to the zombie film serious or otherwise had been used up and the genre has been thinning out.
Apocalypse Z is very much a post-Covid zombie film. There were a number of zombie films actually made during the pandemic with Corona Zombies (2020), Covid-21: Lethal Virus (2021) and Virus: 32 (2022). The scenes with the spread across Europe, the closing of borders and airports, the fights for scanty supplies in near-empty supermarkets all seem to be familiar imagery that emerged out of the pandemic.
Francisco Ortiz in the midst of the zombie apocalypse
Carles Torrens does okay with the basics. He takes some way in before revealing his zombies – and then the big annoyance is that we get fast-moving zombies. These are apparently only virally spread zombies and not ones resurrected from the dead. A lot of Apocalypse Z feels familiar through one having watched far too many zombie films. It is not a bad effort; it is just that most of its moves have been used many times before.
One of the sections that I felt did have more of an originality is when we see Francisco Ortiz trying to survive on his own in an abandoned neighbourhood and then befriending elderly wheelchair-ridden Amalia Gomez and the two developing plans to raid other houses for their supplies. These scenes work quite well, but the later ones aboard the freighter and what is going on there (the Russians plans are never exactly made clear) drag out. The film does arrive at a moderately ferocious climax fighting off zombie hordes and Russians to escape a hospital and get to a helipad.
Trailer here (only one available is dubbed into English)
