Flickers on the Wall: The Dark Side of Zombies

I try, oh Lord I try, to stay away from zombies. But I fail. Their undead paws are into everything, and that just forces me to write about the state of the zombie union. In May’s column, I jumped straight to Zombie Love, a corpse-filled comedy/romance/musical. It doesn’t get any better. However, sometimes you want your spleen-eating to follow a more horrific melody. This brings me back to the land of the undead, but this time in a far darker vein. Call this “Zombie 2: The Dark Side of Zombies.”

Let’s get our prejudices in order. I love zombies. Pus-leaking, crud-oozing, brain-craving zombies are just cute. Okay, they can be scary too, but they have rarely managed that since 1978’s Dawn of the Dead covered all the bases of apocalyptic flesh chomping mayhem. Familiarity breeds contempt, and zombies have become so very familiar. Now, in theory, they’re still cuddly to me, but in practice, it’s hard to get too excited when a zombie picture appears.

Or perhaps Roger Ebert is on the right track. No fan of zombies, the famous Chicago Sun-Times critic thinks there just isn’t much interesting that a shambling, thought-challenged ghoul can do for an hour and a half. A few examples (e.g., Re-Animator) prove him wrong in an absolute sense, but in general he’s got something. Most zombie pics follow the same thin plot (a group of mismatched and rather unpleasant nobodies—and one or two Special Forces operatives—get stranded in a fortified structure while monsters moan at the door and are slowly destroyed from internal strife and external munching. It is hard to stretch that out to feature length without a lot of repetition and filler. The way out in recent years has been to go for humor, which can work, but what about real horror?

So a modern hardcore zombie flick, in order to claw and scratch its way out of the D-movie ghetto, needs to do something different and do it quickly. Of course it also has to be well shot, competently acted, and filled with style and intestines. You’re going to have a hard time finding that at the local Blockbuster. The place to look is in the strange world of short film. Oh, and also in Portugal.

I’ve never connected Portugal and zombies before. Foolish of me. I’ll See You in My Dreams (20 min. Director: Miguel Angél Vivas. Writers: Filipe Melo, Ivan Vivas, Miguel Angél Vivas) is the Holy Grail of decayed flesh. The zombies feel real, the world feels horrible, and the people feel like people, in all their wretched glory. It’s quick, but with a full and twisting story and well developed characters. Advertised both as Portugal’s first zombie movie and its most expensive short (without doing the detective work, I’m willing to believe the claims), I’ll See You in My Dreams succeeds where so many before have failed.

Lúcio is not happy. Rural Portugal may have been a poor choice for a man who loathes trees. But perhaps his disgust with foliage is really just a cover for his more justifiable hatred of zombies. Yes, the local village is infested by them, and Lúcio is the guy who takes them out. Quiet, rough, melancholy, and violent, he’s killed more zombies than anyone, a fact that’s gained him as much respect as anyone can afford at the well-fortified pub where survivors gather in the evening. After his nightly drink, Lúcio heads home to his little secret. Like most of the villagers, someone close to him has become a zombie. Unlike them, he hasn’t given up on her. Let’s face it, no sane man keeps his zombified wife in a cage in the cellar, but if this is your world, sanity has long left for points unknown. Besides, Lúcio has his reasons. He probably should have thought about those reasons a bit more before bringing the only cute girl in the area home for the night.

With cinematography that puts 90 percent of horror features to shame, and boasting a cast of well-known Portuguese stars, I’ll See You in My Dreams is a joy to watch, never stooping to The Blair Witch Project video cheapie-look that has become popular for those without money, talent, or both. There’s nothing to distract from the intriguing story and the mood. Vivas creates a dark future where zombies are everywhere and humans try to get by. There’s plenty of violence, a bit of humor and sex, and lots of cruelty.

“OK,” all you zombie fans are yelling. “Yes it’s pretty, well acted, and well written. But this is a zombie film: Does it deliver the gooey goodness we demand?” Would I really be writing about it if it didn’t? The life-challenged get plenty of biting and chewing in while they receive their required quota of shotgun blasts and head loppings. The camera doesn’t linger on strewn kidneys, but it doesn’t avoid red spray either.

The film gets it’s title from the 1924 American pop standard (yup, the film’s title is not a translation but is in English) which has been recorded dozens of times by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Pat Boone, Doris Day, and Andy Williams. When first heard in the movie, it sounds hopeful, almost light and fluffy. That soon changes to a cover version by goth metal band Moonspell. To get a taste for the film, check out the music video on YouTube.

The movie was at hit (for a short film—definitely a relative term), winning multiple awards at film festivals around the world and getting a theatrical release in Portugal before being released on a deluxe DVD with bells and whistles to spare. Unfortunately, that disk is no longer being pressed. However, a less whistley version is available on a compilation disk: Small Gauge Trauma. And while the strange faux documentary from the original disk is missing, what could be better as an extra than twelve other horror films from the Fantasia Film Festival.

I’ll See You in My Dreams may be the last word in straight zombie horror. If you’re a fan of the sub-genre, it needs a spot on your shelf next to your Lucio Fulci, Sam Raimi, and Dario Argento—who, by the way, all have namesakes in the picture—DVDs.