I like my zombie flicks and when this showed up on neftlix I wanted to see how the swedish handle zombie movies.
Turns out, it's not exactly a zombie movie. The quality of the movie itself is quite bad. I have no opinion about the acting, but the sound mixing is terrible, and the shaky camera and cut aways don't exactly help either. But the story is where it got my attention.
It becomes pretty obvious that racism is the theme of the story here. I skipped mostly through it because it made me uncomfortable to see people treated that way which was likely the point of the movie.
What the most frustrating thing about this movie was for me was how communication between people was absolutely terrible. People sit on important info and when not being listened to they don't even try to shout it out to make people listen.
The ending is bittersweet in a way. It's an ending that makes you think and in my opinion the best part of the story.
When Nils, Hamid, and Sahar (i think that's her name) discover a briefcase with a video explaining the virus, the twist becomes clear. The moment the explanation said 'demonic' I knew where this was going.
When you think about it, the execution of the twist needs a lot of work and is where they kinda messed up in my opinion.
It becomes clear then that the people we are following in this story are not the only uninfected people in the town, they very much are infected but just don't know it. That's what the virus does. It activates something in your flight or fight reaction that shows anyone who you don't know and don't have a relationship with as demonic. The zombies were shown with skull like faces, looking like monsters. But in actuality they were looking at regular humans. They just saw each other as the monster and either ran or attacked.
My biggest wonder though, is how the military personnel that guarded the border and all the officials are also infected? I don't understand how that happened. Because it isn't until Nils injects the military guy Beck-Friis with the serum in the helicopter that he's the only one who later sees the 'monsters' as regular people on the cameras.
But of course, despite what he's saying, he's not listened to and removed by upper brass, because while they probably aren't infected as they came in later, they very much knew what was happening and what it does and wanna sweep it under the rug.
Not surprisingly they're willing to murder and entire town filled with people to hide it.
And they succeed of course. By the time one soldier finally listens to the group and watches the video in the briefcase, making him realize, and hurries to the room where everyone is, the bombs are falling. They listen and watch the video while the town is being blown to smitereens and the people, the humans in it, are killed.
That was an impactful moment. There's no last minute cancellation, no last minute prevention of a tragedy and unveiling of the upper brass knowledge of it. Bad guys win.
And there's no reveal of what happened either. Beck-Friis realizes what Nils did and why he was the only one seeing regular humans as he watches the upper brass on tv giving an interview who are talking lies and sweeping everything under the rug. This is where I would expect him to go and reveal everything as it would happen usually in these kind of stories. But it doesn't.
World goes on thinking there was a deadly infection that needed to be contained by sacrificing an entire town, but instead the people were under a temporary drug and could've survived. But because it was a drug created by government and military, the truth couldn't come out so all those people were killed.
So the movie was kinda bad in execution but story wise has a lot of potential. I would love to see the premise of this story in a well made movie.
Turns out, it's not exactly a zombie movie. The quality of the movie itself is quite bad. I have no opinion about the acting, but the sound mixing is terrible, and the shaky camera and cut aways don't exactly help either. But the story is where it got my attention.
It becomes pretty obvious that racism is the theme of the story here. I skipped mostly through it because it made me uncomfortable to see people treated that way which was likely the point of the movie.
What the most frustrating thing about this movie was for me was how communication between people was absolutely terrible. People sit on important info and when not being listened to they don't even try to shout it out to make people listen.
The ending is bittersweet in a way. It's an ending that makes you think and in my opinion the best part of the story.
When Nils, Hamid, and Sahar (i think that's her name) discover a briefcase with a video explaining the virus, the twist becomes clear. The moment the explanation said 'demonic' I knew where this was going.
When you think about it, the execution of the twist needs a lot of work and is where they kinda messed up in my opinion.
It becomes clear then that the people we are following in this story are not the only uninfected people in the town, they very much are infected but just don't know it. That's what the virus does. It activates something in your flight or fight reaction that shows anyone who you don't know and don't have a relationship with as demonic. The zombies were shown with skull like faces, looking like monsters. But in actuality they were looking at regular humans. They just saw each other as the monster and either ran or attacked.
My biggest wonder though, is how the military personnel that guarded the border and all the officials are also infected? I don't understand how that happened. Because it isn't until Nils injects the military guy Beck-Friis with the serum in the helicopter that he's the only one who later sees the 'monsters' as regular people on the cameras.
But of course, despite what he's saying, he's not listened to and removed by upper brass, because while they probably aren't infected as they came in later, they very much knew what was happening and what it does and wanna sweep it under the rug.
Not surprisingly they're willing to murder and entire town filled with people to hide it.
And they succeed of course. By the time one soldier finally listens to the group and watches the video in the briefcase, making him realize, and hurries to the room where everyone is, the bombs are falling. They listen and watch the video while the town is being blown to smitereens and the people, the humans in it, are killed.
That was an impactful moment. There's no last minute cancellation, no last minute prevention of a tragedy and unveiling of the upper brass knowledge of it. Bad guys win.
And there's no reveal of what happened either. Beck-Friis realizes what Nils did and why he was the only one seeing regular humans as he watches the upper brass on tv giving an interview who are talking lies and sweeping everything under the rug. This is where I would expect him to go and reveal everything as it would happen usually in these kind of stories. But it doesn't.
World goes on thinking there was a deadly infection that needed to be contained by sacrificing an entire town, but instead the people were under a temporary drug and could've survived. But because it was a drug created by government and military, the truth couldn't come out so all those people were killed.
So the movie was kinda bad in execution but story wise has a lot of potential. I would love to see the premise of this story in a well made movie.