Director – Gustavo Hernandez Ibanez, Screenplay – Juma Fodde Roma, Story – Gustavo Hernandez Ibanez & Juma Fodde Roma, Photography – Fermin Torres Echequia, Music – Hernan Gonzalez, Makeup Effects – Sofia Sellanes, Production Design – Sofia Balda. Production Company – Aeroplano/Mother Superior Films/WorldMedia/Maximus Entertainment/Todd-AO/ICAU/INCAA/Ande/Montevideo Audiovisual.
Cast
Paula Silva (Iris), Pilar Garcia (Tata), Daniel Hendler (Luis), Franco Rilla (Javi), Sofia Gonzalez (Miriam)
Plot
Iris is left with care of her daughter Tata due to a scheduling conflict with her ex. She has to go to work as a security guard at the Club Neptuno rec centre and decides her only choice is to take Tata to work with her. Unknown to her, a zombie outbreak has occurred. While doing her rounds, Iris sees two men in a fight outside. One of the zombified men breaks in and frenziedly pursues her. Another man Luis comes to her aid, despatching the attacker. Luis then tells Iris that he needs her help. His pregnant wife Miriam is infected with the zombie virus and he wants Iris’s help to deliver her baby. Luis tells Iris that he has Tata and will release her only after Iris helps him. All around, the zombie horde begin breaking into the building.
Virus: 32 is an Argentinean zombie film. We don’t get many films from Argentina here at Moria so I watched with some interest. Gustavo Hernandez Ibanez had previously made the horror films The Silent House (2010), which underwent an English remake, Local God (2014) and You Will Not Sleep (2018).
The title is of no relevance to the film. It is another example of films made between 2020-2 jumping aboard a pandemic-titled bandwagon. We had other zombie films of this period that did similar things with Corona Zombies (2020), Covid 21: Lethal Virus (2021) and Lost Vegas (2022). Take away the title and there is no mention of any viruses or pandemics anywhere in the film – in fact, the film gives no explanation for its zombie outbreak at all.
The Zombie Film is a genre that feels like all its moves have been played out in the 2000s/10s and has been reduced to self-parody. That said, Gustavo Hernandez Ibanez gives us a good run through of the basics. He creates a contained situation and in a very short space of time starts to create a great deal of tension as Paula Silva finds zombies in the building, is forced to hide and sees lurking things coming after her daughter on the monitor.
Iris (Paula Silva) in the midst of a zombie apocalypse
What you appreciate about the film is that Gustavo Hernandez Ibanez pushes the material into grim and uncomfortable places – like where David Hendler asks Paula Silva to help his wife deliver her baby only for Paula to find that the wife is a zombie, while at the same time Hendler has imprisoned Paula’s daughter to force her cooperation. Or where Paula comes to the horrible realisation that her daughter’s body might be the charred corpse inside the incinerator.
One needless gimmick the film adds to the usual zombies is that they freeze in place for thirty seconds, although this does lead to a fine tense sequence where Paula Silva and daughter must navigate their way down a narrow corridor filled with frozen zombies and then fight their way free as they start to return to life.
