IFFK review | Watusi Zombie! This quirky Malayalam satire rips through GenZ worries
The film also does it, finding its own narrative path with a bizarre layer of humour rolling all over it.
The film also does it, finding its own narrative path with a bizarre layer of humour rolling all over it.
The film also does it, finding its own narrative path with a bizarre layer of humour rolling all over it.
Watusi Zombie! Everything about this 74-minute film is quirky right from its title. Or maybe that’s how it looks to those outside the generation it deals with. Written and directed by 20-year-old Cyril Abraham Dennis, Watusi Zombie!, made by a crew below 25, is, at best, a caricature of their own generation.
With a plot so unfamiliar to the Malayalam cinema, this film set in Kochi holds a mirror to the ways of the GenZ, perfectly knowing that it reflects a distorted or weird image. Like never before, at least in a film made in Kerala – wherein the characters speak mostly in English, this movie tries to delve deep into the world of a generation which is ruled by its own rules. The film also does it, finding its own narrative path with a bizarre layer of humour rolling all over it.
The film revolves around the character of Grindset Gabriel, a youngster who has taken a break from his standup comedy career and is looking for a comeback. We find him, or rather, he finds himself in a small world where everyone is an aspiring artiste, and everyone knows what he said in a close circle. The film starts with a podcast recording where a young writer with a freshly released book is being interviewed. The writer is accompanied by Gabriel, himself a character in the book about strange people.
In the story that Gabriel, in his usual reluctant style, narrates, we come across more strange people and the way they understand themselves and others. It looks like the film ends abruptly, though not actually. It ends at the right place, the only place where two characters find making sense to each other. The good, old traits of human behaviour that transcends generations – understanding and admission – make a splash at a moment that seems real amid what was until then an absurd show of pretensions.
At 20, with Watusi Zombie!, Cyril has made a film that looks silly; but a fresh piece of satire that calls for a renewed sensibility.
(Watusi Zombie! was screened at the ongoing 29th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) under the Malayalam Cinema Today segment. It will have its third and final screening at the festival at Ajanta Theatre on December 18.)