Most 12 year old kids are busy updating their MySpace pages or planning on what they’ll wear to school the next day, but not Emily Hagins. She decided to direct her own feature film about zombies entitled Pathogen after watching a screening of Undead, and Zombie Girl: The Movie is documentary that chronicles her effort from concept to the first screening. Emily’s a local gal, so this movie was a shoe-in for this year’s Fantastic Fest.
Filmmakers Aaron Marshall, Eric Mauck and Justin Johnson stumbled across Emily and her movie when they saw a local ad looking for people who wanted to be zombies in a movie, and when they found out how old Emily was, they decided to do a documentary about the film, which turned into 146 hours of footage that had to be broken down into a digestible size.
Emily’s a normal enough girl who just happens to be obsessed with movies, which you learn when you see her bedroom: it’s plastered floor to ceiling with movie posters. She doesn’t have a particular love for all things zombie-related, she just had an idea in her head after a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. Given her love for The Lord of the Rings (both Emily and her mom have seen the films multiple times, and they even dress in costume), it’s a wonder she didn’t make a swords and sorcery story her first movie.
In the opening scene, Emily’s attempting to direct a scene in an office, where lab-coated extras are delivering a line about viability of a test specimen. The scene plays out and Emily forgets to yet “cut!” In another scene she’s fumbling with the clapper in one hand, and her video camera in the other. After she claps it shut she hands it to one of the actors, who says “Wait, why am I holding this?” These moments aren’t just showing us a novice filmmaker at work, they’re showing us a young girl who isn’t sure what she’s doing… she just knows that she wants to do it.
At one dramatic turn in the film, Emily’s borderline stagemom Megan takes over, and there’s a brief moment where you aren’t sure if this is her movie or Emily’s. Is she just using it to make Emily famous? Is she living vicariously through her daughter? Or does she honestly just want to help her pursue her dreams? It’s probably a combination of all of these, and suffice it say that Emily’s final film wouldn’t have been possible without her help.
She has a lot of drive, and while she might not be Spielberg yet, she knows enough about film to know she wants in a shot, and when her mom tries to interject to say “Well, do it this way,” Emily will say “Yeah, but that’s not how I want to do it.” Or in the case when her protective father tells her to film a certain scene on the sidewalk, and Emily retorts with “Zombies don’t walk on the sidewalk!” Hooray for the undead with no rules! These are the same zombies who later put fake blood all over the interior of a grocery store, which doesn’t exactly endear the project to the owners.
The only real fallacy in the film comes from the documentary filmmakers themselves. They miss some crucial moments, like finding out how Emily eventually completed the editing (she went from Apple’s iMovie to Final Cut), and in getting a reaction from the audience after the premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse, the spot of her earlier inspiration for the movie. There are some all too cutesy interstitial images in the film separating it into chapters, and these feature freshly butchered stuffed animals dripping with blood. I would have preferred to see some of the missing scenes rather than a clever interstitial.
While the Austin American-Statesman compares the film to Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, that’s a huge stretch. Emily’s film didn’t drive anyone to the brink of madness, especially since her mother and father are both in on it with her to some extent. But Emily’s tenacious desire to finish this film, along with her natural charisma make this movie charming and you definitely want to see her succeed in the end. On the flipside, after watching Hearts, I just wanted to see Francis Ford Coppola get some therapy. She’s already hard at work on her next movie, titled The Retelling, which is a ghost story set in Texas. Does this mean Ghost Girl: The Movie is going to make an appearance on the documentary circuit next year?
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog