The “Zombie Girl” of the title – 12-year-old Emily Hagins – is not a blood-spewing freakazoid come to terrorize your local grocery store, eat your dog or stagger down your residential street, moaning dejectedly.
Instead, that’s what she sets out to have her characters do.
Because Emily is a director.
She’s also a script writer and editor for her first feature-length film, Pathogen, a zombie movie full of fake blood and pre-teens.
The off-the-cuff production process – which extended more than two years – is what fuels this sweet and quirky documentary.
But while offering a taste of indie filmmaking, the film’s real heart comes from the stresses and strains of Emily’s relationship with her ultra-involved mother, Meghan, who acts as the prop designer, logistical expert, financer and cheerleader for the film.
Much of the movie focuses on Emily’s age – although as a “talent,” we’re never quite allowed to judge (her film is never shown), and as a pre-teen, she initially seems typical.
As an interview subject, she doesn’t offer that adult ease in front of the camera – she stutters, fidgets and giggles nervously, and her eyes dart from side to side, rarely making contact with the viewer. But beneath her nervous veneer, it’s her extraordinary persistence that sets her apart, and her unexplained, but surprising ability to get others to commit to her unwieldy project too.
The filmmaking process, unsurprisingly, turns out to be much more complex than Emily imagined, and routinely, her mother has to step in to turn things right.
At times, Emily seems to resent this engagement, as she and Meghan butt heads over shooting times and editing. The film doesn’t sugar coat the flaws of either, and seems to occasionally paint Meghan as an obstacle to the film’s completion (which is untrue and seems unfair), but in the end, they both come across as more frustrated than villainous. Hand-painting a prosthetic head late at night, needed for a scene in which a key character is decapitated, it is clear many a good mother would have long quit the show.
The young cast members, too, are the unsung stars of the documentary. Exhibiting a frankness that provides both insight and comic relief, they’re a likeable and quirky group of kids. Surprisingly, they stick with the film until the end, and are ecstatic for their big finale: “Zombie Day,” where a horde of zombies leave a grocery store splattered in fake blood, and their characters’ fake guts on the floor.
Emily’s “talent” is constantly in question. Few industry experts, who were interviewed for the film, are optimistic about the movie being good, and Emily herself admits that it’s “not a great movie.”
But in the end, her skill is somewhat irrelevant – for her, Pathogen is just a starting point, and she wanted to start young.
The question of how accessible technology has made the movie possible is very pressing – and while a few interviews bring up the topic, it’s never explored in much depth.
Far more than a film about a shift in culture, this is a simple and quirky story about a girl, and her mom, and her video camera (plus zombies for added fun).