REVIEW: Pathogen
What do you get when you give a 12-year-old girl a camera and a boom microphone? You get a great spirited, old school zombie movie! Yes, 12-year-old Emily Hagins, decided to make a zombie movie called Pathogen, which is about a group of kids who try to survive when the town’s water supply was poised with a virus that turns people into zombies. There are so many things that I liked about this movie and being a fan of independent zombie movies… this film was no exception.
The film is so simple and it brings the phrase “it’s something in the water†to a whole new level and I think it really captures that phrase. I couldn’t help but think that this movie was somewhat inspired by Cabin Fever although this movie really made you paranoid of the water. After the prologue, when there is a montage of people drinking water and playing in the sprinkler… it overwhelms you with that “oh no!†kind of moment. I love it. I also like how the story progresses and how it wasn’t just about one singular character but rather 2 or 3 different stories that intertwine into one.
What I really enjoyed about this movie were the zombies… because they were old school. Their faces were white, with dark circles around their eyes, blood coming from their mouths, and noses and they walked slowly! They were a throwback to the old school Romero zombies that I loved so much and it was great seeing this in such a young girl’s movie. It let know that there are people out there that still enjoyed and paid homage to the originals.
I did see a lot of things wrong with this movie, mostly technical and had I not known the situation it would have taken me out of the film but once I found out about the director and the hardships I quickly forgave all that. Surprisingly, this movie was edited on iMovie and the editing was very smooth and fluid… again, surprisingly.
Pathogen was amazingly done for such a youthful writer and director and I was pleased to see that this was a throwback to the original zombie movies and not those fast-running, steroid-induced zombies that you see nowadays. This movie stayed to the basics. I kind of felt that Pathogen was like a “Goosebumps†book only a lot darker but it still kept the childhood audience. There were some really bloody scenes and some scenes that I didn’t expect. It was on overall joy to watch this movie and I really think that Hagins is a rising director.
Available at Cheesy Nuggets Production
