ZOMBIE GIRL: THE MOVIE

(2009)

directed and produced by Justin Johnson, Aaron Marshall and Eric Mauck

review by Garrett Cook*

9.7.2009

You can say a lot bad things about today’s culture of media-saturation and bubblegum postmodernism, a society where the prophecies and cultural observations of Warhol are becoming terrifyingly true. But one good thing you can say about it is that there are people who are legitimately passionate about everything from megacheese to so-called high art and that the voices of these determined individuals has many a place to get heard. One of these people is Emily Hagins, dogged, passionate and all of twelve years old.

When young Emily Hagins of Austin, Texas wrote to Peter Jackson because she loved Lord of the Rings, he told her to meet with pop culture guru Harry Knowles. Harry introduced her to genre cinema and to some people who could get her into filmmaking. That’s when Emily decided to make her own feature length zombie movie, Pathogen. There were some who doubted that she could do it, but nobody wanted to stop a twelve-year-old on a mission.

Emily faces any number of problems, ranging from a shoestring budget, unavailable classmates and alienating the grocery store she’s filming at with a bloody mess. She remains plucky, cute and pleasant in the face of adversity, though perhaps a little naïve and demanding. She believes in what she’s doing and makes others believe in her as well, especially her mother.

At once a wellspring of encouragement and a ball of neurosis, Emily’s mother Megan will do almost anything to help her daughter succeed. She is tired, she is beaten and she has a series of tasks in front of her at all times. It’s hard to tell how to feel about Megan because she vacillates between biggest fan and biggest obstacle on many occasions. But then again, this pretty much applies to everyone’s mother and most people’s mothers aren’t helping them make a feature length zombie movie.

Megan and Emily’s relationship evolves and devolves, hitting many peaks and valleys. Seldom do we get to see the adolescent struggle between dependence and individualism played out so directly before our eyes. While this is done an interesting way, it still feels like the film would have benefited from more time alone with Emily and more of Harry Knowles’ running commentary on Emily’s character and the state of the set.

In spite of this weakness and a lack of stylistic flourish, Zombie Girl is a must see because it captures the beauty and indomitability of our drive for creative expression. It is inspiring but not sappy, triumphantly human and truthful.

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*Garrett Cook is a youngish writer of Horror and Bizarro fiction and winner of the first annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown. His book Murderland Part 1:H8 came out in Summer of 2008 and its sequel Murderland Part 2: Life During Wartime is coming Fall 2009. You can find out more about these books at www.evilnerdempire.com/propaganda.htm. Australian publisher Legumeman will be releasing his novella Archelon Ranch in Fall of 2009 as well. You can find out more about this at www.legumeman.com. When he is not writing books, he is associate editior of absurdist humor journal Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens: www.absurdistjournal.com. He wears many hats metaphorical and otherwise, and is impeccably stylish in all of them.