FANTASIA24 REVIEW: Párvulos [2024]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 119 minutes
Release Date: November 7th, 2024 (Mexico)
Studio: Corazón Films
Director(s): Isaac Ezban
Writer(s): Isaac Ezban / Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes (story)

They walk the earth with their trumpets blowing.

It’s up to Salvador (Farid Escalante Correa) to protect his two younger brothers amidst the apocalypse now. Between the monster they’ve caught and hidden in the basement and the ones roaming the wild outside their house, death seems like an inevitability no matter how many precautions he takes. With no other adults around and only one leg, Salvador needs Oliver’s (Leonardo Cervantes) help to do most things and he can’t yet trust Benja (Mateo Ortega Casillas) to not make matters worse via youthful curiosity. But if they just hold on a little longer, maybe their parents will return. Maybe a cure will be discovered.

An obvious commentary on the COVID pandemic, director Isaac Ezban and co-writer Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes’ Párvulos takes place in a world ravaged by disease. Humanity survived the first wave thanks to hastily made vaccines, but the virus kept mutating and the Band-Aids kept losing their effectiveness. Eventually, the science couldn’t keep up with nature and a last-ditch effort to save the species came via the form of an untested vaccine whose side effect was zombification. The original ailment is therefore no longer a concern—just the undead seeking to feed on living flesh.

It’s a dire situation, but Salvador and his brothers are surviving. Forcing these kids to make life or death decisions is an intriguing avenue considering most zombie movies deal with the politics and morality of adults. They don’t know what they don’t know, so sentimentality often proves their main motivation. And it gets them in trouble as much as it provides them opportunity to see how things might not be so black and white. They want to protect the beast they have locked up. It’s like a pet to them. Maybe they can tame it. Maybe it can one day protect them. Or maybe it will be their demise. Not that they don’t have other worries.

Ezban’s film is expertly structured to constantly expand our scope of this fictional Earth. At first, it’s just three boys hanging on by a thread. Then we learn they aren’t quite alone both through danger with the potential for good (Norma Flores and Horacio F. Lazo’s undead) and good with the potential for danger (Carla Adell’s Valeria). And beyond just the threat of what this virus did to humanity on a biological level also lies its psychological effect. Because the zombies aren’t what any of them fear most. No, true terror arrives in response to the so-called “trumpeters.” Are they another type of monster? Or are they the result of mankind’s desperation to give meaning to horror?

So, with that expansion of the mythology through the introduction of new characters also comes an increase in violence and gore. What was once off-screen soon pivots to blood-soaked terror while innocence is replaced by the necessary evil that’s inherent to protecting one’s own above all else. As the bookending voiceover narration states, “the only natural constants are family and change.” Chaos may reign, but family is forever. That means not letting anything get in the way of keeping this brotherhood alive by altering the definition of being a compassionate Samaritan from avoiding sins altogether to committing them in service of each other.

Párvulos gets extremely dark as a result. Much darker than you’d pretend to expect at the beginning. Because even though we watch Salvador kill a dog and walk past a severed torso hanging on a wall, the camaraderie and choices these boys make at the start are justified and, in many cases, funny when you consider context (domesticating zombies can never not include comedic elements). As soon as their unsafe plans take a turn towards tragedy, however, there’s no going back. The descent to all-out carnage is unrelenting as the body count increases and the tone turns from hopeful delusion to bittersweet grief. Because there’s no going back. There’s only the fight to maintain what little you have left.