ZRC Reviews: Chemical 12-D
The Zombie Rights Campaign saw this film at the Drunken Zombie Film Festival, and I have to admit, found it extremely disturbing indeed, graphic and unrelenting in the horrors it demonstrates and the complicated moral dilemmas it poses for Zombie Rights.
A basic synopsis, obtained from the filmmaker’s website:
Chemical 12-D is the latest short from Water Cooler Productions that has begun circulation in the film festival world as well as begun its hype online. Written and directed by Mac Eldridge, Chemical 12-D focuses on Michael Frank, a lone scientist trying to find the cure in a world that has been plagued by infection. Chemical 12-D is about Michael Frank and what happens as he searches for this cure that both he and the world is trying to discover.
The entire film is available on Youtube and will be embedded, behind a cut to shield impressionable individuals from the terrifying imagery.
How does Chemical 12-D fare from the perspective of Undead Equality? To start with, Michael Frank’s manic quest to find a ‘cure’ for a world plagued by ‘infection’ is conveyed quite well as the monomaniacal quest for scientific achievement at any cost, and without letting any obstacles or empathy stand in his way. Frank starts the film by stalking a neighborhood in his car, searching for a recently ‘mutated’ individual, by which the movie means a Zombie, so that he can experiment upon them in his gruesome ad hoc laboratory. Tragically, and unfortunately, he finds his prey in the form of a young, elementary school age Zombie who has been (somewhat callously) yoked out in his front yard with a dog collar on a chain.
On the one hand, this treatment of a child by their parent or caregiver, seemingly for merely being a Zombie, seems unjust and discriminatory, but to be perfectly fair, I’ve seen Living parents put their Living children on not-entirely-dissimilar leashes in malls and parks, and the state doesn’t choose to take their offspring away, so perhaps it’s more innocent than it seems at first glance.
Regardless of the issue of neglect, our sinister mad scientist drugs and abducts the small child, innocent of all wrongdoing and helpless, to take back to his house of horrors and perform a series of gruesome experiments upon the waif. Lest anyone get any sympathetic ideas about this individual’s quest for a ‘cure’, the dispassionate and horrifyingly cold depiction of his malignant pursuit of knowledge, culminating with a truly ghastly vivisection scene, puts those inclinations to rest.
I will not spoil the ending, except to note that it gives a Zombie Rights Campaigner something serious to think over and makes a significant impact for a short film.
Much like A Serbian Film, which we saw at the Horror Society Film Festival, this short intentionally barrages the viewer with moral ambiguity and realistic, gruesome, disgusting – even to the point of nauseating – visceral horror. Unlike with A Serbian Film, it’s not quite as clear that the filmmakers, however, are pursuing any grander statement or vision. Is this horror for its own sake? Is it merely here to sicken? Is that enough? Is a harsh and unflinching portrayal of the actions taken by Anti-Zombie forces socially redeeming enough to justify the depiction and pre-enactment of such rampages on film for audiences?
I’m not entirely certain. For these reasons, and because of the tense and extremely unsettling subject matter, The Zombie Rights Campaign has decided to award this film a Zombie Neutral rating. The story shown here is definitely not Zombie Friendly, and the actions of its alleged protagonist are Living Supremacist in the extreme, but, we can only hope, the filmmakers are endeavoring to illustrate the depths to which Living Supremacists sink in pursuit of their awful goals for a nobler purpose.
To watch this disturbing piece of cinema yourself, look behind this cut:
About The Author
Thanks for the review. We’ve never had anything written about us quite like this.
For the record, the only individuals who cause pain are not the zombies, but in fact the living. The zombies do nothing but exist in Chemical 12-D.
Best,
Mac
The tragedy of Zombies being reduced to merely existing, instead of being allowed to truly live (or Unlive, if you like) is difficult to overstate for the ZRC. It always brings us great sadness to see the Differently Animated suffering without hope, only just getting by, counting the days between attacks by an overzealous military, experiments by cruel scientists or even just the snubs and slights of a larger and indifferent society.
As you note, it is the Living that cause the bulk of the trauma in this relationship, and so it is with the Living that we try to do the bulk of our outreach and counseling. We are glad to have your input here, and happy to hear that our message was received, and hope that it in some small way leads toward healing the rifts between the Undead community and independent filmmakers.