Playing with Tropes: Pretty Dead

When I sat down to watch this, I wasn’t expecting to feature it on TMtV. I expected a riff on the zombie genre and, more specifically, the perspective of someone turning into a zombie. Its other name, the clumsy “Human Meat - Mörder. Kannibale. Zombie.” did nothing to make me think otherwise. It was a 2013 film directed by Benjamin Wilkins and despite our zombie being able to speak and function I wasn’t even tempted towards zompire as the condition was cognitively degenerative.

However, as the film started laying out its own internal logic I sat up, my metaphorical ears pricked. The point that focused my attention was the source of the infection – a fungal infection – that made me think of I am Legend. Now the source of the infection in that was bacterial, rather than fungal, but it just felt that the same trope was being explored.

ready to suicide

So, the film follows Regina (Carly Oates). We see her, as things start, recording a video for her father (Kris Thordarson) before she kills herself. Her complexion is not great and she plays with a gun as she outlines that she is a monster and that she is dead, she just needs help lying down. The screen goes black and an intertitle appears that tells us that, in 2007, Regina killed and cannibalised at least four men but never stood trial. The film is the remaining evidence.

interviewed by Romera

The film then cuts to her being interviewed in an asylum by Dr. Romera (Quantae Love). He tells her that he will have her facial wound (from her botched suicide attempt) looked at but is convinced she is schizophrenic, with a side order of cotard delusion, and lays out why that is. She states that she is infected and repeats that she is already dead. She suggests that she and her boyfriend Ryan (Ryan Shogren) had done tests and then we cut back to the events.

nose bleed

We see footage of her and Ryan together – she is a soon to graduate med student, he is a paramedic. We then see them out with friends and she is convinced (against Ryan’s advice and approval) to try coke (from a source that seems ropey later). She has a nose bleed and collapses in the toilet. Ryan – we find out later – performs CPR and brings her round before they go to hospital but when we first see this we actually just hear a voicemail he leaves his friend suggesting she had some sort of reaction but is stable.

bitten chest

So what then happens is, on a busy morning (with Ryan trying to propose), she can’t stand the food there for breakfast – it all tastes off. That is until she finds bacon in the fridge and eats it raw. He does propose but their subsequent make-out is cut short when she bites his chest. We hear that she had to excuse herself from rounds as she felt ill (and hungry) and smelt someone in a nearby bathroom stall remove their tampon. She explains that she can’t remember retrieving it from the trash but found herself sucking on it. After that she starts stealing human bio-waste to eat.

liposuction fat

She convinces Ryan they have to document this as she now heals quickly, can’t sleep and can only eat either human or pork flesh (and raw at that). We see her drinking liposuction fat. They find a parasitoid in her blood – in fact a variant of Cordyceps. Now that is the fungus that has the famous variant which hijacks the minds of ants to follow its own life-cycle (the film shows us a snippet of documentary on this). A parasite fulfilling its lifecycle and causing vampirism was used, as an example, in Scott Westerfeld’s Parasite Positive and, of course, it is the bacterium infection in I am Legend that causes the craving for blood and other vampiric effects (such as healing).

In this the fungi hijacks her, in the first instance, to drive hunger and to make her crave what the fungus needs (flesh). Why it drives that particular need and not just food for energy I don’t think was clearly explained (or indeed explained at all). What we also see is that at times she blanks and Romera suggests this is like blank moments in schizophrenia. We see her at one point walking a child off (to attack off-screen; the child survives, she blames a dog for the wounds) and at another point her actually attacking someone – so we know the fungus has some level of control. She fears that if she doesn’t feed the fungus will spore.

degenerating

It is an interesting idea and she does seem more zombie (especially given the blank moments – one victim actually comments that she is a zombie before she attacks) but the use of a parasite/infection is a trope used in vampire media. Other things to note is the impact on her complexion, giving her a zombie like look, which doesn’t fit to the quick healing necessarily. Why she doesn’t sleep is unexplained – it might be to weaken her resolve so that the parasitic takeover is more easily attained. There was an interesting thought that this might be a natural pest control limiting the host species if it becomes too widespread and impacts the ecosystem. She starts off with low heart rate and blood pressure but, eventually, there is no pulse and a nurse thinks her blood pressure machine is broken – hence Regina believing that she has actually died and it is the fungus that is keeping her moving.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK