‘Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End’ Review (Amazon Prime)
Stars: Francisco Ortiz, Marta Poveda, Yuri Mykhaylychenko, José María Yazpik | Written by Ángel Agudo | Directed by Carles Torrens
Spain has given us some masterful films about the walking dead over the years, including The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Tombs of the Blind Dead and its sequels, and more recently the REC franchise. Now we have Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (Apocalypse Z: El Principio del Fin) based on the first book of novelist Manel Loureiro’s Apocalypse Z trilogy about a cat-loving lawyer’s struggle to survive a world overrun by zombies.
A year after losing his wife in a Christmas Eve car crash, Manel (Francisco Ortiz; Memento Mori, El Cid) still hasn’t recovered mentally. He lives alone with his cat Lúculo and ignores the news broadcast on his television about a fast spreading pandemic, the TSJ Virus, that’s throwing the world into chaos.
His sister Belen (Marta Poveda; You Would Do It Too, The Replacement) and her husband are being sent to the Canary Islands, and she convinces him to join them. But as he and Lúculo are about to board their flight it, and all other flights, are cancelled. The virus has just mutated, and the dead are beginning to walk.
Director Carles Torrens (Pet, ABCs of Death 2.5) and writer Ángel Agudo, whose credits include Sweet Home and the Paul Naschy documentary The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry, set the tone quickly and efficiently, starting with newscasters talking about the possibility the virus is a bioweapon that escaped from a lab that sounds a lot like what we heard during the early days of COVID. As the situation worsens, we see panic at the airport, highways turned into parking lots and buildings being sealed off within the first fifteen minutes, with viral videos of flesh-eating and a state of emergency being declared shortly after.
From there, however, Apocalypse Z becomes a familiar story as Manel sets out to reach the Canary Islands on his own. Apart from the zombies, he also has to deal with human evil in the form of Ushakov (Yuri Mykhaylychenko; Finisterrae, Silent Cargo) and his crew, picks up an ally in the form of helicopter pilot Victor Pritchenko (José María Yazpik; There Are No Saints, Narcos: Mexico). It all climaxes in the remains of a hospital, with the pair fighting against the living and the dead to save themselves and a group of women and children.
It sounds like The Walking Dead or any of the many zombie-themed video games, but it’s well enough executed that it still held my attention. Granted, at an hour and fifty-two minutes, it could have done with a bit of trimming or perhaps a few more scenes with the zombies. The scenes with the walking dead, especially a chase through the woods and the chaotic final scenes as they try to get the helicopter in the air, are well staged, the film just needs more of them.
It could also do with being a bit bloodier because when it comes to the gore that the zombie genre is known for, Apocalypse Z is much closer to World War Z than the films of Fulci and Romero. In keeping with more mainstream zombie films and TV shows, the attacks are sanitized with a lack of gaping wounds or spilt intestines. There’s a distinct lack of chewed-up bodies or other signs of zombie activity.
From what I’ve read, the film makes some major changes from Loureiro’s original, so fans of the books may be disappointed. Overall, though, I thought Apocalypse Z was an entertaining film that should have a stronger appeal to fans of more recent zombie films than those of us who prefer the old school gut munchers. As you might expect, the ending leads into the next book in the series and Amazon could do worse than filming the other two books.
*** 3/5
Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End is available to stream via Amazon Prime.
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