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Versus Netflix #41: State of Emergency

Written and Directed by: Turner Clay

I’ve honestly not been doing my normal Versus iTunes reviews simply because I haven’t found a Versus Netflix movie I wanted to talk about. I want the two to always be contemporaneous to each other so when one goes down for whatever reason, the other inevitably suffers. But coming off Halloween, I wanted to talk about a horror movie for the first time since Terror Month back in July, so my agonizing over what to pick had to come to something. And so here we are, with a movie I can only describe as a surprise. I randomly picked this on a night, along with George Romero’s Bruiser, off of Netflix and decided to watch them, not really knowing too much about either or how I’d feel. But man, for something I’ve never heard of, never seen anything from, randomly found and doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page for, State of Emergency is a scary good movie. I think the easiest way to set this up is to simply say that what State of Emergency does is find a way to engage art house style cinema with a genre, namely zombie horror films, without a major breakage in how the story is set up. In my quest to absorb a lot of zombie related media I’ve found that there are largely two ways films of this nature are set up: titillating action gore-em ups or bleak thematic character stories. More and more works are embracing the latter and State of Emergency is no different, but what I like about State of Emergency as opposed to say the Walking Dead TV series is the sense of stillness. To re-dredge the well, I’ve become so used to zombie films dealing with hordes that seeing a film where there aren’t endless hordes is a wonderful surprise. Writer-Director Turner Clay presents a rather desolate view of the world, using the farm expanses of Middle America as a means to convey the utter singleness that goes through one when put into a crisis. The choice is an oddly bold one, as the large amount of distance between the characters and threat results in a much more claustrophobic feel than one would expect, as if the rolling shots of the farmland is hemming them into the random sheds and buildings they inhabit. What is created is a sense of dread of the unknown, as each of the characters in the story is aware of a threat but is not constantly confronted by it, forcing them instead to keep occupied by the mundanity of living without having the boldness to confront the outside world. In service of this, both the cinematography and camera work reach a nice tandem, being able to keep kinetic energy in the various shots they take but not worrying themselves about becoming frantic. For the most part, shots in the film are occupied by long takes, meditating upon the movements of people or the landscape as we wonder what horrors lie beyond. As so many scenes take place during the day, we get a very broad sense of the world each of the characters sees, taking on a degree of tedium as they more or less wait to die. Lighting switches so perfectly between ambient and washed out, echoing an art house comedy in a lot of ways, giving everything this subtle palour as if it’s a world apart. And I think that’s the ultimate draw here, that in a world shattering crisis like this, we do come apart from the world as a whole. State of Emergency makes a film about a world where intimacy and fear are the only options left to us and gives us the choice as to how to feel about it. Each shot lingers upon the achingly large world that we see so little of, giving the viewer time to wonder if everything is so bad beyond the horizon. It’s effective world building, as the small circumference of the actual action works well to draw you to characters and imagine their point of view while still making you feel how fragile their existence has become. And honestly, it’s a zombie film where the primary skill isn’t to scare us with numbers but instead to show us how empty the world Is without the living and any film that pulls something like that off should be praised.

And I’m sure you can guess the story to this film is very minimal, which of course, serves it’s intended purpose. As I follow it, here’s the gist of the plot: Jim (Jay Hayden) makes his way to an abandoned chicken house with his injured wife Emilie (McKenna Jones), who then dies. Jim is left alone to shore up the defenses as infected attack his utterly alone position, until he gets a signal from a not so distant farm from other survivors. Pretty much everything that follows involves characters talking, fighting the few isolated zombies that crop up and finding means to take care of each other. That last part is perhaps the most important aspect and one I feel is sorely lacking from most zombie stories. In times of trouble our reactions all vary but we expect people that are inherently good, weren’t looking for this sort of trouble, to want to take care of other people. This is perhaps the one major problem with the Romero zombie films, as Romero is so persistent in pointing out the faults of people that his heroes rarely end seeming like genuine good guys rather than just the protagonist the film happens to catch. But State of Emergency is a film that deals with a lot of caretaking, beginning with scenes of Jim carrying his dying wife and watching her fade away. Despite all good sense, he never buries her, never disposes of her body in any way, instead letting it linger in the chickenhouse with him and as he goes about silently doing the daily chores he thinks will protect him. It’s a powerful moment that kind of defines what Jim is all about, as he constantly confronts himself with the bleakness of his own existence, having lost the person he cares most about and is unable to part with, but showing his spirit to keep surviving, that there’s something beyond how the world is now that he can live for. It adds a very definite weight to scene involving other characters, namely Scott (Scott Lilly), his wife Julie (Kathryn-Todd Norman) and reclusive survivor Ix (Tori White), as his conversations with them always feel rather tentative, but friendly. What the movie asks us to imagine are bonds being forged by adversity rather than the vainglorious turn of man against man, which has become such a cliché of the genre. These are people who are doing there best to deal with a traumatic experience and survive in the face of something they don’t understand and can’t fully face, holding out hope that someone will come to save them soon enough. This is a rather smart move by the filmmakers, as it makes it easy to get into the minds of the characters and conveys a great deal without a great deal of exposition or dialogue. Most people picture themselves as good people and much like that, we see the projection in the characters who aren’t being so much overwhelmed as set into a war of attrition, finding ways to give each other hope and comfort. It’s almost more like a war film than a zombie film in this respect, but it’s interesting to see it done with something so stock as the zombie genre, allowing the bigness of the landscape to contrast to the minimalism of the people, which in turn creates wordless volumes about them.

The kind of stupid thing that I would complain about and honestly, every negative review I’ve seen of this film, is how different it is to every other zombie film. The typical idea exhibited in the zombie genre is that of the horde, the representation of our abject fears about a population turned against in one way or the other. They represent the idea of humanity withut the human presence within, making them the articulation of how desperate we feel when confronted with the fact that we can’t immediately understand each other. Or in essence, they are an Other, the us that is not us. We usually see this represented in the large crush of bodies on screen as it’s meant to be an overwhelming drive, that these Others have risen up in force and own weakness of form prevents us from being able to properly dispose of them and take care of ourselves. However, the representation in State of Emergency is quite different, as not only do we only see the infected in isolated numbers, but their composition is different than most representations. Here is where I have to go into spoiler territory, so be warned. State of Emergency’s plot takes place in such an expansive location because the outbreak in the film is localized to the one area, creating the infected amongst a small populace rather than a larger epidemic and what’s more, by the end of the film, we learn exactly what has caused it. This depowers a lot of the idea of why we should fear these creatures, as having a cause for their appearance makes it difficult to see them as a force of nature that is going to overwhelm and destroy us. In general, the more we understand something the less scary it is, so knowing their origin makes us aware of their once humanity to a greater degree, taking away part of the idea of the other. What’s more, since they are so few and far between, we never get the overwhelming urgency of the tasks of the characters to fight them off, a they can seemingly pick them off one by one as the film goes on. But the film twists this a bit in an interesting direction, as much like Return of the Living Dead or Land of the Dead, these particular infected show signs of intelligence and capable humanity. At one point in the film, Jim sees one on the horizon, having seen it previously, however it never draws closer. When he finally ventures out, believing himself to be unthreatened by the creature’s disinterest, he soon finds himself attacked, it having lured him close only to spring with blinding speed. The infected in State of Emergency are both fast and capable of hurting you greatly through cunning and awareness of their surroundings. This brings back the idea of the Other as they have distinctly human traits aside from their form, and they use this as the means to destroy us. They become a representation of the worst humanity has to offer, but never quite make that full leap into being completely different. I don’t think it’s really a problem for the film, but I get the sense that zombie enthusiasts have a very clear picture of what they imagine zombies to be, and these don’t cut the mustard.

But this is my ringing endorsement. I am just utterly shocked as the mediocre reviews I’ve read of this film, as it is beautifully shot, thoughtfully written and intriguing in being so different in a genre known for its homogenization. While the zombies representation and cheap CG damper it a bit, it’s a film that is amazingly subtle in what it does and actually gets you involved in the lives of the characters because they’re not simply survival machines. For a film I found randomly, I am shocked and happy to have seen it and think it is perhaps the best zombie film I’ve seen since 28 Days Later.

Key Scene: With Ix having gone into diabetic shock, Jim decides to make the dangerous trek across the landscape to one of the supply drops they have learned of, hoping to find insulin. While there, he’s attacked by an infected managing to fend it off, but not killing it, only for it to return and attack them in the stables. I like this whole exchange for a number of reasons. The stakes of this are built on Ix and Jim’s relationship, which has been tentative up to this point, but one that has slowly drawn closer and become more forged by shared adversity. Jim’s willingness to do this is such a potent demonstration of his remaining humanity and will to live, something we keep expecting to drain out of him. It adds a lot of tension to a film, basically functioning as a climax as it gives them a reason to feel threatened within their safe house and forces the change that ends the film. And really, it’s the best demonstration of Jim’s inability to recognize the infected as intelligent and what consequences this might have.

Who I’d Recommend It To: Fans of zombie films who aren’t going to quibble over how a zombie is defined and those who’d like to see something different from the genre. Those who have lost ones they love. Art house film goers and lovers of character dramas. Those who see the glimmer of hope in even the darkest darkness. People who have been out in the sun too long or alone in their rooms too often. Anyone who fears what humanity might do to destroy itself. Writers wanting to learn how to do minimalism right and cinematographers seeking different milieus.

Where You Can Watch It: As I mentioned it’s available on Netflix, so take a gander if you should so like to, though the DVD is a tad overpriced. Streaming: http://www.putlocker.com/file/5B8A6E3B0A5610BC

An Arbitrary Rating: 9/10