- It’s funny that sometimes my film festival selections take on accidental themes. TIFF 2007 seemed to be the year of the incoherent, quasi-biographical music movie when I saw both Across The Universe and I’m Not There. Hot Docs 2009 accidentally shaped up to be Tales of Extraordinary Children™ and I couldn’t help but compare this movie in my mind to Inside Hana’s Suitcase while I was watching it. One of the things I mentioned that irritated me about Hana’s Suitcase was how condescending it was towards children and what I loved about Zombie Girl was that it absolutely wasn’t. Emily takes on the task of directing her first feature-length film and no one pats her on her head and treats her like a child. The adults aren’t humouring her by indulging her in her film interest; they’re actively supporting her and are genuine in their desire for her to succeed. It’s not “Oh, she’s just a kid!”, it’s “Wow, she’s a kid and she’s doing these amazing things already!”
- The other important thing with this is that there’s an honest passion to what’s happening in this movie. No one is trying to capitalize on Emily’s film the way the blood sucking art world tried to in My Kid Could Paint That. There aren’t any terrible stage parents lurking at the edges of the frame trying to pressure and exploit their kids. There’s nobody, save the local film critic for a brief segment, trying to control Emily’s artistic vision or accidentally turn her project into their project by “helping” a little too much. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the documentary was filmed while the zombie flick was being made, so there’s a good sense of immediacy that re-staging everything later on wouldn’t have been able to facilitate. That Emily’s movie isn’t shown at all in Zombie Girl doesn’t even matter; this movie is about the creative process, about a mother-daughter relationship, about everything but the final product itself. Whether or not her movie is actually good is pretty moot.
- I found it interesting that Emily lived in Austin, which is where Robert Rodriguez and his merry band of renegade filmmakers call home. I just kept thinking of all those DVD extras he does where he’s like “Look! You don’t have to make a film in Hollywood! You can do it all at home!” because that’s clearly what happens here. I just liked that kind of geographic, grassroots connection.
- All the various pre-teens in the movie have pretty hilarious observations about the filming process, so it added a nice dose of levity to the proceedings.
- Truthfully, the main reason I saw this was because I just do not get the whole zombie phenomenon. This didn’t particularly help me understand it, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Zombie Girl: The Movie
Honestly? I just don’t get the fascination with zombies.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Emily Hagins is making a zombie movie. It's feature-length, it's bloody, and the zombies don't run. Just like it should be. But there's just one difference between her film and every other zombie movie you've ever seen. Emily is twelve.