Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
So by now, we’ve all heard about ELEPHANT, the film that won Gus Van Sant his awards at the Cannes Festival a few months ago. Basically, it’s his take on the Columbine tragedy, and on any situation where a kid feels so powerless that he has to use a gun to make himself heard. It doesn’t surprise me to hear that someone else has also made a film dealing with the subject matter. Sounds like it’s a much smaller film, but it seems to have affected at least one viewer enough to write in about it:
What if the Columbine killers made video diaries of their preparation for the massacre, the footage was found, and then it was edited into a feature documentary?
That’s what “Zero Day” is about.
My name is Kryshan Randel, long time reader, first time writer. My favorite thing about your site is that, sometimes, it spotlights films few people have heard of that really deserve the attention. “Zero Day” is DEFINITELY deserving of attention.
I was attending Vancouver’s CineMuerte Film Festival, a great festival of fantasy and horror, when I came across “Zero Day”. It was in the festival’s only To Be Announced slot, so there were only about 20 people in the audience, no expectations, and almost no information. I walked out of the theatre blown away at the most realistic fictional film I’ve ever seen. “Zero Day” is a film that will surprise and disturb a lot of people, an extremely powerful video diary recorded by two teenagers that plot a massacre at their local high school, document the process to leave for the media, then pull it off.
The great thing about this film is how realistic it is, not a single false frame - one festival screening committee actually called to FBI after watching it to report the crime. Like life, the kids have normal parents, friends and jobs, and normal interests, which they make clear do not influence their decision to kill (in fact, they burn all their possessions immediately beforehand). They are smart, focused and disciplined, and they do not provide any easy reasons as to why they are the way there are.
The film never strays from their point of view until the final scenes, which are brutal and almost unbearable to watch. (SPOILER WARNING: DON’T READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING). Voices of the killers and a 911 operator plays over security camera footage of the massacre, which screens like Michael Moore’s almost identical footage from Bowling For Columbine, only more graphic. And it’s still not over yet…
Director Ben Coccio is a genius for filming a very controversial subject in a brutally realistic fashion, starring unknown teenagers Andre Keuck and Calvin Robinson and their real parents and siblings in a film that is absolutely impossible to forget. This film should be watched in every high school in America, love it or hate it, it really gets you thinking.
Check out this site for more info. And thanks in advance for posting this.
Thanks for sending it.
"Moriarty" out.
