Movie Review: The Night Eats the World

The Night Eats the World ** / *****

Directed by: Dominique Rocher.

Written by: Jérémie Guez and Guillaume Lemans and Dominique Rocher based on the novel by Pit Agarmen.

Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie (Sam), Golshifteh Farahani (Sarah), Denis Lavant (Alfred), Sigrid Bouaziz (Fanny), David Kammenos (Mathieu).

 

I will say this for The Night Eats the World – which is yet another zombie movie – at least I think it’s trying to do something different in the genre. For the most part though, Dominique Rocher’s film doesn’t really succeed in doing that. For most of the film, it’s centered on one guy – who has almost no backstory, and doesn’t say a whole lot in the film – and after a while, he’s just not that interesting to spend time with. I appreciate the fact that the film doesn’t become another Romero rip-off, but it doesn’t really replace what it leaves out that most zombie films do, with anything of interest.

 

In the film, Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie) shows up at his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to pick up some of the stuff he has left behind – and unhappily wanders into a party his girlfriend and her new boyfriend are throwing. He just wants to get in and get out, but she wants him to stay – they need to talk about something – so he drifts into a back bedroom and falls asleep. When he wakes out, the zombie apocalypse has befallen, everyone else in the apartment in dead, and there are hordes of the undead outside. For the time being, he’s safe as long as he stays in the building – but what will be do with his time? His only friend is Alfred (Denis Lavant), another survivor, who commits suicide, and then comes back as a zombie – who spends his time on the other side of a gate, trying to get at Sam – who talks to him a lot. Other than that, he spends his time playing music, going through people’s possessions, shooting the zombies with a paintball gun – and, well, nothing really. Eventually more will happen – but it takes a long time to get there.

 

It’s clear that this is one of those zombie films that doesn’t much care about zombies – and is rather about the subtext the zombie genre so easily provides. In this case, it is a portrait of Sam, who what little we know about him seems to suggest that even before the zombie outbreak was isolated and lonely, willfully cutting himself off from those around him. Now, he has an excuse to indulge his worst, anti-social tendencies by just being by himself all day, every day – and what happens to him when that both starts to wear thing, and when it isn’t true anymore. Eventually, we also need to come out of hiding and interact with the world.

 

Perhaps as a short film, this could have worked. It is interesting in terms of its setup, and the finale for the most part works, even if it the most familiar element of the story. But most of the film simply drags – as we wait for the main character to realize what everyone in the audience does early on – he cannot stay here, hiding out forever. There is often the lone weirdo in zombie movies – those guys the group we are following meet after months or longer of that guy surviving on his own, and perhaps going slightly mad. If nothing else, The Night Eats the World shows us why movies don’t usually focus on that guy – he’s kind of dull.

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