Zygote

ZYGOTE is another Neill Blomkamp short film. This time, we join survivors Barklay and Quinn (Dakota Fanning and Jose Pablo Cantillo), after something has gone horribly wrong in a subterranean facility.

It seems that a creature is after them. A monster so hideous and so mind-bending that my jaw dropped and stayed there! This is Blomkamp's unspeakable tribute to movies like John Carpenter's THE THING, James Cameron's ALIENS, etc., and does it ever deliver the flesh-crawling goods! Impeccable CGI makes this one unforgettable...

Recently been on a spree of revisiting Tales from the crypt on Youtube. Was searching for a short horror film n when i saw the name of Neill Blomkamp, i was totally interested in checking this out. The 22 minutes was worth it. Comparison to Carpenters The Thing is inevitable but this movie really succeeded where the remake failed. It is claustrophobic, tensed, fast paced, superbly acted n directed. The film is set in the mining colony in the Arctic circle. We r told that outta 98 crew only two r remaining. One of em is wounded n blinded n the other a frightened junior female crew member. The monster/thing is made up of body parts of the dead members. There is no safe chamber or place to hide as the monster has the fingerprint ids of all the doors. The creature was terrific though.

If you choose between seeing this and Life (2017)... choose this instead.

Let me explain why.

George Miller, master storyteller and director of the Mad Max films, has said that audiences have learned how to "speed read" films, citing the number of cuts between the earlier Mad Max movies and the latest, Fury Road: Wikipedia claims that Fury Road contains 2,700 cuts while The Road Warrior had only 1,200.

I bring this up because Zygote offers us the very same setup as films like Alien, Aliens, John Carpenter's The Thing, Event Horizon, and even Life, of this year: Zygote is set in a derelict and remote station featuring workers being stalked by a horrible creature. Zygote is superior to Life only because it is much more condensed. I'm judging Zygote by Life because they came out the same year and Life has failed to evolve.

No, I'm not giving preference to Zygote over Life just because Zygote is shorter-- Zygote is condensed. As the Mad Max movies have evolved to suit the abilities of "speed reading" audiences, Zygote offers us everything Alien, Life, and The Thing offers without dragging out the entire show.

The "trapped in space with a horrible monster" genre has been done to death. Zygote wisely gives us all of the feelings of isolation, fear, claustrophobia, and wonder that the genre offers us in just over 20 minutes. "Life" was overlong rehash of a film we've seen more than a dozen times now. Perhaps Zygote-- or rather, its format-- is the evolution of the genre.

A criticism: the opening exposition is weak, just the male lead talking and explaining the setup. And he speaks in such a gravelly-growly "please take me seriously, I'm a hardened veteran, no really" kind of way I wished there was an option for subtitles.

In any case, props to the FX department of Zygote-- they did a wonder creating their monster. Now THERE is a scary creature I'd rate in the same category of creepy-cool as Alien's xenomorph. Not Life's "Calvin..." that thing looked like a lizard with a four feelers.

Zygote is a short scifi horror film with outstanding production values and led by Dakota Fanning.

The first thing you notice is how good it all looks and sounds, this is a film with money and talent behind it and it shows.

Telling the story of two survivors of some horrific event in a base while being stalked by a gigantic creature seemingly made up of the body parts of its victims.

Though it does only stand at around 20 minutes and therefore isn't an entire story it does entertain regardless.

I would love to see a full length version of this, a sequel perhaps?!

The Good:

Monster looks incredible

Dakota Fanning is actually on decent form

Fantastic production values

The Bad:

Messy plot

Once again, we have the arctic, cold and claustrophobic, and two people who are miners, the last left of a huge work crew, trying to survive while an amorphous creature tries to kill them. The one guy, the boss, is blind, and the other is a woman who doesn't fit the usual protocols on this encampment. It's one bloody scene of dismemberment and slaughter after another. Never cared for this, but I am granting it a good rating on technical grounds and intensity. I wish I knew a little more about what they were up to.