Residential Evil
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Night Eats the World (2018)
Based on a novel by Martin Page under the nom de plume Pit Agarmen, “The Night Eats the World” imagines a zombiepocalypse as akin to one hundred days of solitude.
There’s much exposition in this film adaptation by Dominique Rocher -- depicting the protagonist, Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie), begrudgingly crashing a party thrown by his ex (Sigrid Bouaziz) and her new beau (David Kammenos) in an effort to retrieve his belongings – which ultimately prove to be of no consequence. Sam retreats to a storeroom to nap when his nose inexplicably bleeds; he wakes up to find all the party guests walking dead. He holes up in the flat for the most part, occasionally venturing into neighboring flats to forage for food. As days go by and his rations dwindle, another survivor (Golshifteh Farahani) unexpectedly reaches out.
It’s a matter of time before Sam finally hazards a trip outside the apartment building, but his reasons are not what you’d expect. He even habituates his fears enough to befriend a zombie, played by Denis Lavant, trapped in a cage elevator. There are some clear signs of Sam’s longing for companionship and his mental deterioration, but there is a bit of a disconnect with the fantasy that he has apparently concocted, perhaps out of guilt, that also proves him an unreliable narrator. Maybe there’s a bit lost in translation from the source material, but the film never sufficiently connects all the dots to complete Sam’s character arc.
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