Dominique Rocher’s The Night Eats The World is a breath of fresh air in the increasingly stale zombie genre by injecting humanity in the form of the films only protagonist played beautifully by Anders Danielsen Lie (22nd July).
Anders’ Sam wakes up after a house party in Paris and discovers that there has been some kind of viral outbreak turning everyone into zombies, and thus begins his quest for survival. Right from the get go I had the feeling that this was not a generic zombie film, at almost every step The Night Eats The World subverts most of your expectations going in, Sam is not at the party for the usual reason for example. He’s a bit of a odd character and the film focuses on what a situation like this would do to someone and how they cope with various horrors to survive.
Visually the film is quite reserved choosing to focus on the character moments throughout. One of the things that struck me was that the zombies in The Night Eats The World choose to be less talkative than others, making for a much more tense time when you hear the bones cracking and teeth grinding.
The Night Eats The World is a great film that caught me off guard with
Dominique Rocher’s reserved pitch perfect direction and Anders Danielsen Lie gives such a convincing performance that I really look forward to watching more films with him.
The Night Eats The World can be seen over the next two months at the
Alliance Française French Film Festival which is showing Australia wide, I highly recommend it.
Thanks to Alliance Française French Film Festival for providing me with a screener for this review.
