Director/Story – Wych Kaosayananda, Screenplay – Stephen Poirier, Producers – Scott Clayton & Wych Kaosayananda, Photography – Wych Kaos [Kaosayananda], Music – J-Punch, Production Design – Toey Jaruvateekul. Production Company – K.A.O.S, An Entertainment Co., Ltd/Gear Head Co., Ltd./Karnjanabuli Lifeguard/Thumbart Studio.
Milena Gorum (Sylvia), Alice Tantayanon (Rose), Michael New (The DJ)
It is after the zombie apocalypse. Girlfriends Sylvia and Rose live together at a holiday resort, which they have made into their private paradise. This now comes under attack by the zombie onslaught.
Wych Kaosayananda, variously also billed as Wych Kaos or just Kaos, is a director from Thailand. Kaosayananda first appeared with the Thai action film Fah (1998). This led to his being imported to direct the English-language action film Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002), which proved to be an expensive flop that torpedoed Kaos’s burgeoning career in the Hollywood mainstream. It was some years before Kaosayananda returned to make to the director’s chair with the likes of Angels (2012), Zero Tolerance (2015), Tekken: A Man Called X/Tekken 2: Kazuya’s Revenge (2014) based on the videogame, the zombie film The Driver (2019) and the subsequent action film One Night in Bangkok (2020). Kaos has also produced The Lost Medallion: The Adventures of Billy Stone (2013) and Latency (2024).
I quite enjoyed Two of Us as it opened. It was leaving me with a distinct The Quiet Earth (1985) vibe. It is almost dialogueless as we watch Milena Gorum and Alice Tantayanon at the resort, swimming in the pool, showering, watching videos, making dinner, going out to scavenge supplies, stopping to bathe in a stream. The pace is languid and unhurried, while the photography of these scenes often has quite a beauty. There is no explanation of what has happened to the rest of the world – just the often languorous shots of the girls enjoying their solitude – the film’s alternate title is Paradise Z, which seems a more apt description as opposed to Two of Us, which sounds like a generic romance/relationship film. There are no other characters than the two girls for almost the whole film – they encounter two guys in one scene later and there are some cutaways to a broadcast from a dj (Michael New) and that is it.
The only quibble with these scenes is that while we admire the surroundings, we are distant from the characters. We know nothing about the two girls other than that they are girlfriends and one very brief flashback to the outbreak. They seem opaque as characters, something that is not helped by Alice Tantayanon who is blank as an actress too. Milena Gorum is more expressive but the two are given little to work with. Furthermore, much of the dialogue they have is quiet-spoken and barely audible.
Where Two of Us becomes considerably less interesting is around the halfway point when it suddenly reveals that it is a Zombie Film and that we are in is a standard zombie apocalypse. From thereon, the film proceeds in the directions that are expected of the genre with the girls fighting off zombies with an assortment of weapons, along with dealing with a couple of human marauders.
By the end, Two of Us is just another zombie film of no distinguishing features. The one interesting thing is that this seems to be a sequel to, or at least exist in the same world as Wych Kaosayananda’s previous film The Driver – both are zombie films, while both films feature sets of characters setting out in search of the reputed refuge of Haven.
Two of Us should not be confused with Two of Us (2019), the English-language release title for the French drama about middle-aged lesbians, which came out around the same time.
Trailer here