Zygote (2017)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The wonderful thing about short movies is the elision, the things that are left for the imagination to discover that suggest a story wider than what we're allowed to see on the screen; to extrapolate from excerpts of speech, or from signs on the wall, or to gauge from exchanged glances between individuals. There is a tremendous amount of detective work required for short films, and a great deal of guess work too.Combining imagination with the clues we find on the screen, the viewer can imagine for Barklay and Quinn - the two survivors of a crew of ninety-eight - vastly different experiences. For Barklay (Fanning), the viewer can imagine a youth in servitude to the Cerebus Mining Group, living as a synthetic underclass of mine labourers somewhere in the Arctic. From her interactions with Quinn (Cantillo), the viewer learns that she has 'insufficient status' to open many of the doors and is forbidden from handling a gun. On the other hand, the viewer learns from Quinn that he is a superior class and is probably a guard or an enforcer of the miners judging by his uniform and his access to doors that Barklay does not. He even commands a respect that ensures Barklay refers to him as 'Sir' even when the mine is in peril. Later in the film, Barklay passes through an area with UV light and her class appears in writing on the back of her jacket as well as being revealed in a series of markings on her forehead, whilst Quinn passes through with nothing marking his identity of class.There is no information provided about what brought the mine into its apocalyptic state and whilst the viewer ponders whether something was discovered in the mine; something alien, prehistoric, or viral, Blomkamp takes the opportunity to develop a rich dialogue between Quinn and Barklay. He tells her that he gouged out his eyes at the sight of a bright light surrounding the 'creature', and that it has the ability to absorb information from the minds of its victims and learn everything that they know. Barklay, due to her class, is willing to sacrifice her life in order to save Quinn, and even bypasses her ingrained protocol about weapons handling to shoot at the creature.Often when inhuman creatures are revealed in horror films, the effect can be disappointing and reduces the impression of the film to the quality of the costume and special effects departments, which is why so many horror films never reveal what is hunting its protagonists down. However, when the 'creature' in Zygote is revealed, the results are startling. The creature appears to be a literal translation of the film's title, a 'Zygote' - a joining together. The 'Zygote' has taken the bodies of its victims and meshed them together into a flesh-suit and as it chases Quinn and Barklay through the mining station, the viewer can see the ninety-eight legs waving in the Arctic winds and the ninety-eight hands attempting to access the bio-metric door locking systems.When Barklay and Quinn are together in a room which appears to be the location of their last stand, he reveals to her that she is not a synthetic but a human. He explains that full-synthetics are expensive commodities and that the company has been purchasing human orphans to work as labourers and convincing them that they are synthetic; which is why so many of them become sick in the mines when synthetics would not. Once this information has been passed on, Quinn decides to give Barklay his handgun to arm herself whilst he buys her some time to escape. He cuts off his finger to allow her access to parts of the facility that might enable her survival and waits for the creature to get to him. Confident in her humanity and her new-found desire to survive, Barklay escapes into a tunnel and shoots down the creature, steals one of its hands, and enters a room into relative safety.As Zygote draws to a close, it becomes apparent how suitable Earth might still be for the survival horror genre. Often narratives like this one might take place in space, in a post-apocalyptic Earth, or on an alien planet, but the reality of setting it in the Arctic reminds us how hostile our planet can be and how little we know about our Earth. There is no time period associated with the film, it could be in the distant past, present, or technologically advanced future. It is this timelessness and the darkness of the Arctic that makes it fully believable that this could be happening right now.The one failing of this short film is that it doesn't feel as self-contained as I would expect a short film to be, instead, it feels more like an excerpt of a film or even an extended trailer to a feature length film. It might be that this is the film's success; convincing the viewer that there is more to the story than the twenty-three minutes Blomkamp gives us and leaves us wanting to see more - Does Barklay make it off the station? What does she do with her new-found identity as a human? Whilst we might never know the answers to these questions, Zygote is an experience worth talking about. The film demonstrates the potential of a small cast, effective creature design, and a level of horror that blockbuster directors have been aiming at and missing for the past few years.Read more at 'www.thecineastereview.wordpress.com'

This short was so lacking in substance and originality that I'm struggling to find words to describe how bad it was. I would call it a high budget low talent student film, but that would be an insult to some very well made student films. Don't waste your time, you won't miss a thing.

The plot here is somewhat of a sci-fi/horror staple: an isolated location (base) and monsters at (or inside) the door. Many shows and films have done it, but in particular Zygote brings The Thing and Alien to mind. The delivery is simple too; after some dialogue in a contained room to set the scene, two survivors must try to make it across the base to the point they can escape. At first the dialogue was a little uninteresting, but as the film goes on I realized that this opening scene did add a lot to the film. Okay it is direct exposition, but the short running time doesn't give you the freedom to let it play out another way, unless you use a narrator in the same way as Rakka did, or a similar device such as the opening footage of Firebase.This opening scene does ask a lot though, because in addition to the exposition, the male actor is not particularly strong – feeling a bit forced and trying too hard to do what he is doing. Once the beast comes though, the film takes on a great pace and sense of horror. The beast itself is a horrific and chilling piece of body horror; the CGI feels real in the way it moves (and moves not just as one creature, but as a horrid composition of people). Through the escape, there are scenes reminding us of what we already heard – and there is a real horror here which the film does well to link to even if it doesn't have the time itself. Fanning is good in the lead, convincing in her fear and limits.As with the other shorts in this Volume 1 of release, it doesn't feel like a whole (because it is not) but at the same time there is more than enough here to make it effective.

Director Neill Blomkamp's experimental venture Oats Studios has produced shorts from a wide range of genres, including comedy, fantasy, and war, but primarily sci-fi, which often crosses over into the former three. "Zygote" is the first horror outing from the Oats team, and it is a strong case for a full-length horror feature from Blomkamp.Zygote has definitely been my favorite narrative Oats short so far. With the previous shorts "Rakka" and "Firebase", a lot of the story was told through expository narration and flashbacks, which still worked because of how it built the world, but made them seem less like a traditional short. With Zygote however, the story felt much more natural, with much of the backstory and worldbuilding coming through dialogue and mise en scene. In Zygote, Jose Pablo Cantillo and Dakota Fanning play the two remaining survivors of a mineral mining facility somewhere in the north. Genetic experimentation by one of the occupants has created an abomination made from parts of other living things. Cantillo and Fanning must make a last stand against the monstrosity to ensure the crew's sacrifice was not in vain.The terror of this short is palpable, and showcases Neill's range as a director. Scenes of the wailing, undulating Zygote stalking down dark corridors are sure to stick with you. Jose Pablo Cantillo and Dakota Fanning were brilliant in their roles, clearly conveying the fear of being trapped inside with the monster, as well as the simultaneous courage to stand off with it.If I had any criticisms, I would say that some of Jose's dialogue sounded a little fast or whispered, making it hard to hear, but it didn't detract from his overall performance. As for the Zygote itself, while the creature was terrifying, (maybe giving the Thing a run for its money!) I think it could have benefited from a wider range of vocal sounds, and was more scary when obscured by dark lighting, thus giving it a sense of mystery.All in all, wonderful work from the Oats team! I'll be looking forward to Volume 2!