PATHOGEN
***
At ten years old, Emily Hagins most likely did not have a conscious understanding of the symbolic meanings attributed to water. Purification. Innocence. Life. I imagine that she still didn’t grasp this concept another two years later, when at age 12 she completed the screenplay for Pathogen, her first feature-length-film. And yet, days after viewing her completed film I am still reliving the scenes of water. Much like David Lynch’s opening scenes in Blue Velvet, the cinematographer of Pathogen captured shots to create a montage of water, from the mundane showers and pouring of cups of coffee, to the sublime slow-motion shots of a young boy joyfully letting water from a hose splash onto his face as he shook his wee head in slow motion, left to right. The cinematographer—which, by the way, was the very same 12-year-old Emily—knew that shot might elicit a sense of purity, maybe security. She knew—though possibly without awareness of this knowledge—that juxtaposing those shots with the reality of the danger within the water would cause discomfort, unease….a stronger sense of the impending doom. And when you’re watching a film start more or less start out this way (after a setup that was well-written but poorly acted, natch), it bodes well.
Is it a great film? Uh…no. Did you really expect greatness from a zombie film written by a 10-year-old, shot by a 12-year-old, and post-produced by a young teenager having difficulties with math class? I certainly wasn’t expecting much. But is it a BAD film? No. It’s not that, either. There are a handful of novice actors; two are pretty damned good, several are pretty damned bad. But, honestly, the worst of the kids was no worse than the kids on your average Disney Channel show. And the script is actually pretty smart, involving biomedical nanotechnology research and the havoc that can ensue when slides are left sitting out on office countertops. (It can happen.) There’s even intrigue and betrayal, since not all brains are affected quite the same way when wee robots proliferate within the human body.
Having just finished watching a documentary about Emily and the making of her (first) opus (see review of Zombie Girl here), I was expecting a cute little movie made by the cute little girl, with some blood and decapitation worked in some cutesy over-the-top way. I was rooting for Emily and her cute merry gang, and I expected nothing more than to have a good laugh and smile patronizingly while clapping at the closing credits. But I was not expecting to be impressed. There were scares, there was just enough gore, and there was the thought that kept repeating in my head: “This is FAR more entertaining that George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead.” And a far better homage to his genre-launching Night of the Living Dead, as well.
- Giselle Crow
March 5, 2010
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