Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by Marc Fratto
• Starring
  • Gina Ramsden
  • Joshua Nelson
  • Christa McNamee
  • Gaetano Iacono
  • Constantine Taylor

Know what’s really cool? When filmmakers get better at what they do. In a reality which contained a modicum of sanity, I wouldn’t even need to state something so obvious. But I live in this world, not that one, and so the abstract idea that directors should grow in their craft from feature to feature is so rarely demonstrated that I feel like I’m rediscovering a lost ideal whenever I see growth in action. It’s even more puzzling that it should be so rare among independent micro-budget filmmakers; these are, after all, the avocational cineastes whose productions are powered entirely by Top Ramen and the drive to demonstrate their love of cinema through its creation. You’d like to think that individuals so devoted to the idea of film wouldn’t be content to suck so grievously and consistently.

All of which is the background which fuels my enjoyment of Last Rites of the Dead. Writer-director Marc Fratto’s last feature, Strange Things Happen at Sundown (2003), showed exceptional skill in both filmmaking mechanics and in the kind of emotional subgirding which supports memorable cinema; unfortunately, it lacked focus and tried to tell too many conflicting stories concurrently. In this latest feature, Fratto retains the skills which served him well the last time out (as well as much of the previous cast, and even a number of the same shooting locations), but narrows and concentrates his focus; the result is a movie which deals with a large-scale societal calamity by examining it in microcosm, in the lives of a handful of well-realized characters. The movie still seems overlong to me, but this time it’s length owes to the depth, instead of the breadth, of the narrative being dramatized.

I’m glad we’re supposed to despise Josh. Because I really really do.

(All of which may sound like awfully high-falutin’ language when talking about a zombie flick, but we’ve got four decades of cinema history which say that zombie flicks can be as deserving of high-falutin’ examination as any other subgenre of film.)

The montage of news footage under the opening credits lay out the large-scale situation for us: The dead are rising. But not as the brainless shamblers of Romeroesque living dead scenarios. No, it’s only the recently deceased who are returning, and they’re coming back largely as they were in life — a littler uglier, perhaps, and more likely to smell bad. But they’re the same personalities as they were when biologically functioning, and that’s got society in turmoil. The dead haven’t become something wholly apart from the living; they are instead in a nebulous state which perhaps invites easy Othering, but which doesn’t as easily accept an Us/Them divide. They still reside in our neighborhoods. They still labor in our workplaces. They are, as one would imagine, the perfect symbol for every rejected, marginalized, or oppressed group in western society, and the arbitrary nature of such exclusions is highlighted by the fact that their Otherable state isn’t one of ethnic heritage or genetic determinism. They were us, until death abruptly made them not us.

You know, Angela, a lot of goth chicks would kill for that “naturally dead” look you’ve got going.

That’s the big picture situation, but the movie immediately becomes more personal and visceral with the introduction of Angela (Gina Ramsden) and Josh (Joshua Nelson), on either side of a locked bathroom door. He’s brandishing a gun and alternately pleading and threatening, because nothing regains the errant heart of a disaffected lover like promising to blow her brains out. She’s cowering in the bathtub, crying and begging him to go away and not hurt her. This, as they say, is an Unhealthy Relationship, and it becomes a lot more unhealthy for Angela, literally, when Josh breaks down the door, looms above her, and plants a bullet in her head. Then, being a craven dickwad, he gets jittery and scrams. It’s a painful and difficult scene, and its place at the beginning of the narrative should be a warning to viewers: this ain’t a popcorn zombie flick.

Five months later, Angela is still trying to adjust to being “mortally challenged,” as the touchie-feelie leader of her zombie support group” calls it. I guess for being dead for almost half a year, she doesn’t look that bad — her skin is ashen, and livid capillaries show in splotches, but there are people walking around worse off. She’s caught in a limbo, holding onto her job, watching as the government hems and haws about whether they’ll continue to treat the ambulatory dead as “people,” puking any time she eats anything other than raw meat. She can only be called “living” by approximation; what she’s got isn’t really a life.

“Um, I’m just barely dealing with the whole ‘dead’ thing — overt lesbian overtones are more than I can handle right now, okay?”

Josh, meanwhile, has taken his craven dickwaddery and turned the dial up to eleven. He, along with two wastrel friends, consider themselves “warriors,” and cruise the streets looking for defenseless zombies whose shit they can kick, as a message that “their kind” isn’t welcome. Just as the real-world dregs of society gravitate toward shrill racism because they can’t justify their pretensions of superiority except by assigning merit to the lack of pigment in their skin, Josh and his turdbrain friends can only claim to be self-evidently superior by virtue of the fact that they haven’t stopped breathing yet.

If Angela’s and Josh’s paths would stay separated now, we could ignore his extreme dickwaddery and focus on the uncommon drama of a girl trying to find a place for herself among the living. But Josh can’t let that happen. He stalks Angela, intruding on her life, with that same combination of behaviors which served him so well in the bathroom scene: sometimes he merely insists on a chance to talk (though never to apologize), and sometimes he explodes in belligerent rage, as if Angela’s companionship among the dead were a personal and undeserved affront to him, as if he weren’t the person who put a bullet in her brain. (The lack of any kind of law enforcement presence in their relationship is puzzling; even if normal social services aren’t available to zombies, the fact that she’s an eyewitness to her own successful murder should make this an open-and-shut homicide investigation. Right?)

And especially not Irish ones.

As with the real-world societal issues that this zombie uprising substitutes for, the moderate middle is plucked at from both extremes. On the one hand, Josh and his posse become trainee footsoldiers to The Commandant (Christa McNamee), a mean-spirited military brat whose pure rage at the affrontery of the dead powers her entire organization, a burdgeoning army preparing for war. On the other hand, Angela is introduced to some zombies who have turned their back on “fitting in” to the community of the living, and instead follow the teachings of the neo-hippie Mother Solstice (Mary Jo Verruto), who teaches them to see themselves as the more perfect iteration of humanity — and who shows them the painkilling benefits of consuming human flesh.

And if you think there’ll be fireworks when these two groups clash, you’re right.

As with most movies with a Message, it’s hard to avoid the sensation that you’re being preached at, especially when the people we’re supposed to hate are saddled with some very definite conservative earmarks; the Commandant wraps herself in the flag and rants about “preserving our way of life,” and a vaguely Christian TV preacher pushes for a “final solution.” I think it’s pretty obvious which social issues here on the homefront we’re expected to apply any lessons learned to. (”To which social issues we’re expected to apply any lessons learned”? Whatever.) But moving away from the macro issues to the personal lives of those involved, the moralizing becomes less political and more universal: A life centered on hatred can never be a happy one, and attempts to dehumanize one’s enemies — even if they are enemies because of their attempts to do the same to you — is the worst form of living death.

“Would it be more fair if I gave you a headstart? Ha!”

What with all my philosophicating above, you might get the idea that this an obtuse, arthousy flick, more suited to the liberal arts groupie than the horror fan. Far from it. There’s plenty of violence and gore, sustained as it can only be when the participants can’t die. But the fact that there’s a point to it all, that it is very much a movie with a conscience, elevates it above 95% of common zombie fare.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 13 (counting only those instances in which someone technically “alive” is technically “killed”), plus 1 mouse
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0