Featured Movie - Zero Day

Fred123

Zero Day

A 2003 independent film directed by Ben Coccio, Zero Day deals with a very sensitive subject in the most blunt way possible. While high school massacres have been explored in cinema and literature before (Gus Van Sant's film Elephant and Stephen King's novel Rage come to mind), the wake of Columbine has popularised the concept through sensationalist media like never before. Zero Day is an unapologetic reaction to this, a Blair Witch style home movie tape collage filmed in handicam showing the circumstances around two young men in preparation for a war on their school. While the obvious connections with the Columbine incident could initially present the film as a cash-in on a horrific event, Zero Day avoids the cliche of romanticising the tragic aspects too much which works heavily in it's favour. People sick to the teeth with theories and debates about what motivates such an event, whether it's the endless rants about violence in the media warping children, drugs, permissive parenting etc will not find any preaching here, just brutal facts and some eye-opening insight that lend you to make your own conclusions.

Andre and Cal are two suburban white kids from rich homes, with what appears to be a healthy social group and loving family. All is not right however, and the opening of the film sees them declaring themselves as the Army of Two against their 'nemesis' of a high school, as they videotape themselves in it's parking lot. You don't quite know if they are serious or not at this point, the outlandish normalcy, good-humoured jibes and the fact that they are evidently intellegent young men make it seem like a distant joke. Over time a portrait of everyday life is revealed through Cal's tapings of conversations with family and friends, intertwined with graphic footage of what the boys get up to when nobody is around and their taped monologues in preparation of the event. These are all put in a safety desposit box to be released to the media after it's all over. Zero Day is a mind-numbing exercise in desensitising the audience through dispelling the alienated sociopath myth, Andre and Cal are far from insane and the way the event seems like something that isn't going to happen through all the normality despite the scary amount of preparation and military precision behind it is something that hits you like a hammer. Where Elephant left out all the details of how to secure weapons and orchestrate this kind of event for fear of people copying it, Zero Day reads like a how-to manual of decieving your parents, stealing hunting rifles off close releatives, making pipe bombs and planning an assault through a number offensive scenes that dwell in a kind of sick, yet appealing humour as Andre and Cal tape themselves. The reasoning behind their actions are disturbingly apt yet do not offer any real kind of moral justification, loose ends remain untied and is an example of a film that leaves the viewer conflicted in emotion. Though a flawed low-budget film dwelling in a subject that has been thoroughly hacked to death by the media, Zero Day finds a refreshing angle and manages not to fall into the trappings of become a sentimental cliche.

Confirm Pentecost

I just downloaded it and gave it a shot. And I have to say, I loved it. It was realistic; it was scary. The limo scene reminded me of the way some of my friends used to act in high school. And also, the acting was superb.

My only gripe was the shooting scene. Parts of it just didn't seem as real as the rest of the movie. Like in the beginning, everyone comes flooding in from one direction, only to turn around and go back? And then when they're all running around the tables - What's the point in that? They should know their school, and know that it's just a big "U" that's not going to help them at all.

But other then that, I thought the movie was great. My heart was pounding as they left their car to walk into the school.

Very scary movie. Very real.