New Horror Movies Ep. 149: Dead Man Still Walking - Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (2024)

Jay of the Dead's New Horror Movies presents... Dead Man Still Walking with Dr. Walking Dead. Welcome to another exciting edition of Deadman Still Walking. That's right, this is episode 51. So I hope you tuned in and enjoyed our special episode 50. with Jason J. of the Dead Piles, where we get to break down our top 10 zombie movies. Please do reach out with questions, comments, rebuttals, arguments. It's easiest to reach me.

Honestly, through email because I'm an old man. But you can also connect with me on Instagram or on Blue Sky at Dr. Walking Dead. Well, it's time to start the next.

50 episodes, I suppose. And we're going to kick things off, I think, right. with a relatively new zombie movie. So for me, it's still 2024. So I'm still catching up on the main horror films of the year. For you all, it's 2025. But this is still pretty recent because it just more... came out I'm also kind of excited well

I'll be honest. I'm really excited because this is actually a good zombie movie. And for some reason, we've been getting some stinkers in 2025. But we also got some great ones. So don't forget, you know, Waking the Dead. Very cool. afterlife lives. What was that one? Pretty cool. So now we've got a new one for us. This is a Spanish zombie film, which is cool. We don't get a lot of zombie stuff out of Spain. It's in Spanish language.

and I do recommend you listen to it in Spanish, not with English dub. It's a little clunky. And this is also based on the first of a trilogy of novels. Which implies, I think, that if this does relatively well, we might see a trilogy of films. I am speaking, of course, about Apocalypse Z, El Principio Delphine. Well, there's my Spanish for you. That is Apocalypse Z, the beginning of the end.

So, yeah, that subtitle certainly implies the ideal of having more movies come out. Now, unfortunately, the Internet Movie Database viewers are not liking it as much as I did. However, a score of six... .1 out of 10 is certainly higher than many, many, many zombie and horror films on Internet Movie Database. So that's pretty cool.

This is a, like I said, it's a Spanish production from a production company I'm not super familiar with, but it is through Prime. It's being distributed and potentially backed by Prime, and that's where you can catch it. It's a little long for a zombie film. It's an hour and 57 minutes, but I think it works because there is a ton of storytelling going on in this film.

See, now this is where I'm going to be a little confused. One of these wrote the novel, one wrote the screenplay. Now traditionally... We get the screenplay writer listed first, which is Angel Agudo, based on presumably the novel by Manel Lorero, whatever, and directed by Charles Torrens. Charles Torrens. I'm just kind of checking on Internet Movie Database. Good. Charles Torrance is, in fact, Spanish. He's from Barcelona.

So that's kind of cool that we have a Spanish novel, Spanish production team, Spanish director, Spanish actors. I am harping on that. But the thing is, the reason why I'm harping on that. We have so many zombie movies out of the United States, obviously. And we've got some amazing zombie stuff coming out of Asia, particularly Taiwan, South Korea, China, Japan, all those places. Well, I guess Taiwan instead of China. But anyway, we're getting great stuff.

out of all those places. We used to get pretty great zombie stuff out of Italy. We're still getting some decent stuff out of England and France, but not so much Spain, so I'm pretty excited about it. So anyway, that's the setup. That's what we're going with today.

So let me launch into a little bit of an overview and give you a taste of this film. Okay, this may not surprise you, but... The Beginning of the End is a movie about the rise of a zombie-like virus. Now... It's kind of cool because this is contemporary and this is a world in which COVID has happened. So I think that's kind of neat. We've seen some zombie movies so far in a pre-COVID world. So there's no COVID at all, obviously.

That's most of them. We've seen some movies where COVID or COVID-like things become the zombie plague.

like in the sadness. But this is one of the first ones I've noticed where it's a post-COVID world. And so people are familiar with the quarantining, the masking, the pandemic, the misinformation from the media, et cetera, et cetera. So we're primarily... focused on this guy manel i don't know if yeah it's not manual it's manel which is the name of the author which is interesting whatever so manel is our kind of plucky

sympathetic protagonist, and he is kind of cut off from his family. Well, let me back up. There's quite a bit of setup that has nothing to do with zombies, because this is going to be a horror drama. There is some drama stuff going on here about him and his family and the fact that he lost his wife tragically. And that's kind of the setup.

But he's connected with his sibling and niece. And so there is this kind of family environment going on. And his close family, they go to the Canary Islands and he is left behind. I think it's Madrid, but he's left behind. as this rabies-like disease surfaces and starts to transfer from place to place. Like in so many zombie movies, because we are following some of the Romero tropes here, a lot of the exposition, a lot of the information

So we're getting shades of the COVID experience there where, you know, people are watching TV, they're trying to figure out what's going on. And then we see... Unlike some films where the zombie plague is like overnight, like in World War Z, where it's very, very sudden.

In this one, it's a little bit of a slower burn. Things are gradually ramping up and people aren't sure what's going on or what they should do. They're getting some different information through the media. And then we start seeing images that are very familiar to us.

So there's a couple of sequences in the grocery store. The first one is where things are still kind of... working right but people are encouraged not to buy more than two of anything and of course people are anyway and there's a a resonant moment where you see a shopping cart that's like mostly full of toilet paper so that could be funny

But it's also not funny because it's like, oh, I know what that means. So people are preparing to lock down now for the film. And this is what's cool. They are preparing to lock down again. They are like, okay, we've been here, we've done this, we've been through COVID, let's do what we did last time, let's supply ourselves, let's get ready to hunker down. Then as things escalate...

And we find out the severity of this outbreak. We get the scene where people are fighting over whatever food is left and grabbing canned goods. And the shelves are empty and people are starting to panic. that I think is beyond COVID, but very resonant to the zombie film. So he set that idea up.

Then we get an evacuation, a mandatory government evacuation where they're relocating people to camps that are supposed to be safe. Now, for those of us who love zombie movies, who love horror movies, we, of course, are going. No, that is not a good idea. Do not trust the government. Do not go to the government camps. I've said before, big fan of The Stand by Stephen King. And so all my alarm bells would be going off. And that seems to be Manel's experience.

He is in intermittent contact with his family and he is encouraged and he agrees to rest in place, to stay put and to not allow himself to be. evacuated. So he hides and pretends he's not home as the government troops come through and pull everybody out. Side note, his boon companion is a cat. So interesting parallels to quiet place day one. where we have a cat protagonist. This cat is not particularly chill all the time and unfortunately has to spend so much of the movie locked in a cage.

All right, so Manel and his cat hunker down. They're going to wait it out. Unfortunately, the satellite network goes down or something. He loses cell coverage. He can't talk to anybody. He can't talk to his family. He doesn't know really what's going on. He's able to pick up some stuff on the radio. they're broadcasting, but eventually he has to start going out to forage. He has to go visit other locations to see what food's available.

In an interesting callback to ZOM 100, Bucket List of the Dead, and I have no evidence that anyone involved with this film is familiar with that narrative, this guy protects himself with some deep sea apparatus.

We learned through production design that Manuel likes to deep sea dive and hunt. So he has he has kind of an armored wetsuit and a harpoon gun. So. props the harpoon gun as zombie weapon is kind of a cool idea and he is smart enough by this point he knows that you know these these infected people are rabid 21 days later style and they're

of bite and tear and claw. And so he wears all this protective gear and he tapes up all his seals and he's got his weapon and he's able to go out and kind of find what's going on out there. So it does really evoke. ZOM 100 to me. But whereas ZOM 100 is more comedic and parodic, this is dead serious. But there are some interesting parallels there. To go back to the drama side, he does find another survivor in the

neighborhood who is staying put. And this is an older woman, an older woman who is wheelchair bound and so really couldn't evacuate. And she has no interest in evacuating. And so she is able to, from her high rise apartment. kind of scout out for him with her eagle's eye.

And they have walkie-talkies, so he goes out on missions and finds food and shares it with her. And they create this really touching symbiotic relationship that I found really enjoyable. Let me see. Yeah, and I can't grab her name. so bad about figuring out who's who. She may be Mujer Forgoneta, played by Elena Sello, and I forgot to mention that Manel is played by Francisco Ortiz.

So anyway, they have this really great relationship, but it does turn out that things are not going to get any better. They're only going to get worse. And Manel has to leave. He has to move on.

Well, this is the thesis of the first chapter of one of my books. 20th century zombie movies were really about staying in place and waiting it out. Fortifying your location, boarding up your doors and windows, having your food storage on hand to help you survive. But then in the 21st century, particularly with World War Z and with Shaun of the Dead, for that matter, we get a different approach, which is.

is you've got to move. If you stay put in a zombie plague, you're just going to eventually die because you're either going to get overrun or you're going to run out of supplies. So really, you have to move. And rather famously in World War Z, the movie, the line, movement is life, is kind of a mantra for that film. So Manel has to move. He's got to get out of there. So the movie, to me,

And I know this is pedantic, but to me, it's like it starts in the 20th century and then it moves into the 21st century in terms of zombie tropes and narratives. Although, to be clear, we are talking about 28 Days Later type infected zombies.

just rabid people who are really tough and fast and mean and vicious. Okay, so Manel gets out and he finds a motorcycle. So he goes on the road and now we get the Spanish Daryl Dixon. Because he's got his harpoon gun instead of a crossbow. He's got his motorcycle and he's out on the town.

Pretty exciting. I like the motorcycle sequence. The zombies are super fast. And so he does end up driving through a herd and they're on him. So no, it is not The Walking Dead in that regard. So it gets pretty dicey for him. He does in his journey, in his attempt to get to the Canary Islands where his family's waiting, he does see the abandoned. He does see that the government efforts have been in vain. Everything's overrun. Everything's really, really terrible.

Well, because this film is taking established zombie tropes, especially from the U.S., and kind of re-presenting them in Spanish terms, you know where this is headed. He finds some people, and those people are horrible. Well, initially... thinks they're good, but we know they're not good because they have Russian accents. Although one of the guys, and this is where it gets weirdly political.

So he ends up getting a boat and getting out into kind of the harbor, the river, and he gets picked up by this ship. And the ship is implicitly Russian. But there's one dude on the ship who is nice, and he is from Ukraine, but he speaks Spanish. And so I think there may be some political stuff going on there because is this implying an alliance between Spain and Ukraine and Russia as the antagonist that they have to unite against? It's entirely possible and it's very easy to read it that way.

I'm just going to move on. So he kind of now forms a bond with this guy. There's lots of scary harrowing stuff on the boat that I don't want to give away, but they have to move on again. So this is cool. This is really cool. He's traveled by motorcycle. So, you know, one if by land.

He now ends up on a boat, so two if by sea, but he's got to get to the Canary Islands and land isn't going to work. He doesn't have the kind of safety he needs on the water. So what's left, folks? We got to go by air. And luckily, this guy that he's become friends with is a chopper pilot. So we're going to get a helicopter. Now, we have seen helicopters in zombie films, obviously, and most notably in Dawn of the Dead.

So this is a great shout out and call back to that kind of Ur text that one of the best ways to get around in a zombie apocalypse is a helicopter. You don't need a landing strip. You can go anywhere. You can land on roofs. So he's got to get this helicopter. So they're going to go to a hospital and try to get the medical plane, medical airline. Helicopter. Thank you very much.

So the next phase of the film, we've gone from his kind of subdivision to this travel narrative, and now we're to this hospital phase. He does meet more survivors, and they are women and children. So now his motives have... shifted. The stakes are higher and they've got to figure out how to survive a hospital that is largely filled with infected people. Because it's a hospital, side note, you know, if it's an infected zombie plague, you generally want to avoid hospitals.

If it is a traditional zombie plague, you want to avoid morgues and morticians and stuff. Anyway, so now we've got the bad guys on his tail, the helicopter that they can't get to, and zombies everywhere. And I'm going to leave it there because that's kind of where we get into the last act. And I don't want to ruin the last act for anybody because I really do suggest people watch this. So I am going to ultimately give you a positive recommendation and referral on this.

But that's kind of the general storyline. Now, if you think that it's going to resolve, remember the title of the film, The Beginning of the End. So I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that this film does not end in a way that is particularly resolved, because I do think the goal is to have a second film, which I would, in fact, welcome.

This is Ron Martin, and you're listening to Dead Man Still Walking with Dr. Walking Dead. So what do I think? What do I think of this film? Well, like I said, I've already kind of hinted at this. In a way, it's not necessarily doing anything new. It's taking a lot of established tropes and familiar elements from a host of other zombie films. It does have... some Night of the Living Dead going on. It does have Dawn of the Dead going on, but it also has 28 Days Later going on.

Pretty overtly, in fact, because it is a rabies variant, kind of like in 20 Days Later. The zombies act the same way. And these aren't Asian zombies, so you don't have to worry about bone cracking and contortionist movements. These are good old facts. fashion, Danny Boyle infected. But you also get this kind of ZOM 100 flavor going on. And I think it is cool because like World War Z, we do have some scenes on land, on sea and in the air.

And I thought that was cool. I thought it was a cool exploration and a cool progression. So what the value is in my mind of Apocalypse Z is even though a lot of these things are familiar, it's repackaged and put together in a way that no other... has really done before. I also find that its emphasis on character, character development and family and stuff, invests the audience more in a film like this than maybe some of the other zombie films where you meet people briefly.

have fully developed characters. You don't get attached to them and their world. Or it's such a myopic narrative that we get from some zombie stories that we don't get a sense of the bigger picture. which this one does. The media is really a heavy element of the narrative, very much in the tradition of Romero's films, if not...

excessively so, but we get to a little bit more of a sense of the global impact of what's going on. Again, more in the sense of World War Z's globalization in terms of the plague and the infection. So we do get to see see, hey, this is a bigger picture. This is something that's going on. We stick with one protagonist, which I think is great, and he is sympathetic.

Yes, it's a little heavy handed. We, you know, we make him a widower and we establish the tragedy of that loss at the beginning. So we all feel sorry for him. Also, he literally saves the cat. So because of he cares about his. dead wife. He cares about his cat and he cares about the old woman in the wheelchair. Obviously we're going to root for this guy. This guy is a saint.

He cares for all the people that you want him to care for. So when he struggles to survive, we're really pulling for him. And I think that makes him a really great, sympathetic protagonist. And he's a little badass when he needs to be. Super cool. And everything really comes together in what I think is a very exciting climax.

So like I mentioned, yes, there does seem to be some political message going on. I don't know enough about Spain, and I certainly don't know what was going on in Spain during COVID, but we do see some of these more or less global. concerns about disease and infection, of government misinformation, of not knowing who to trust, of how to survive a quarantine situation. So the shades of COVID are pretty strong. I've proposed a paper on...

post-COVID era zombies. And I wasn't aware of this film at the time, but if my paper happens, I'm going to talk about this film as part of it because it's very clearly placing itself in a post-COVID world. And it's overtly addressing COVID in ways that are familiar, but also different, obviously. So, yeah, there's some government distrust, some paranoia, some global issues, etc. But largely, this is an homage to time.

Tons of different zombie film traditions. And I really like how it really does kind of marry Romero tropes to Boyle tropes. And for a lot of people, those are two types of zombie narratives that don't mix. And Apocalypse Z demonstrates how they can indeed mix and mix pretty effectively. So I'll move on to my final thoughts and ratings. I'm looking at you, Jay. You do get some heart, and I think that's important.

contrary to what people on internet movie database think i'm giving this one an eight out of ten and i am going to say this is a this is a strong rental or stream, I think you should go watch it on Prime. I don't know if it's going to have a physical release. I would probably hold off on buying it unless they do make a trilogy and then, you know, hold out for a box set.

But because I think this narrative could get better with additional films or installments because it does set it up. It does feel a little bit more like an extended pilot for a show. But who knows? I am going to try to read the book. Obviously not in Spanish.

in translation, but I want to check that out because it's exciting. I want to see where it goes. So there you go. I would say strong. Yeah, we'll call it a rental. I think you should check it out. It's pretty cool. All right. For the next show, I do have a lot of stuff. from the 80s just chomping at the bit to come out and I want to cover some of those earlier zombie films again but I'm still trying to hit new zombie movies while I can and that's like I said it's December for me

So I'm trying to wrap up my 2024 screening docket. So next time we're going to look at a film called Die Alone. It's been getting some good buzz. I've heard some good things about it. Written and directed by Lowell Dean. and we'll see. The Internet Movie Database description calls it a zombie-like outbreak, but looking at the trailer that I'm trying to avoid, but it's playing on the screen in front of me, they sure as hell look like zombies to me.

I'm interested in this film for a couple reasons, but one of the big ones is it stars Carrie Ann Moss. You know, she used to be a pretty big A-lister. She's still a great actress, so we'll kind of see what she does with it. I like the written and directed by, maybe some auteurism going on here. I do want to put a call out there. Still not getting a lot of zombie narratives from women. Not a lot of women directors kind of delving into this territory. So if you're a female director of horror...

movies. Come on. Give us the female voice. Tell the women's zombie movie if there is one. So I'm just throwing that out there. Anyway, it looks like... This one, Die Alone, is something I'm going to have to rent right now. Maybe it's free by the time you're listening to me. But it's $4.99 right now on Prime. I'm going to check that out and come back with it for episode 52. So anyway, I hope you're having a...

Great winter and or spring, depending on when you're listening. And, you know, keep checking out these zombie movies with me. And remember, remember, always shoot for the head, folks. You got to shoot for the head or it's not going to work. Peace out. It's time roger. I'm on a pitch in at the middle of the residence. Report cut for you. I was trying to drive away in a vehicle that is now on fire.