The Night Eats the World

Well they say that, at this point in life, there is nothing new under the sun. As spectators, bringing this phrase to the world of cinema could be hopeless. However, it is thanks to the inexhaustible creativity of the new generations that we can always find something different in the cinema that comes. That is the case of The Night Eats the World (La nuit a devoré le monde), a film that manages to deliver something different from everything that the zombie film world has accustomed us.

For the audience, the idea of ​​a movie of the living dead immediately fills their minds with scenes full of action, blood, a lot of suspense and a high dose of adrenaline. From The Night of the Living Dead - to quote George A. Romero's 1968 classic as the beginning of an era of these characters that continues to be alive - until the exciting Zombie Station: Train to Busan (2016), from South Korea's Sang-ho Yeon, the subgenre has been presenting again and again the same formula that, in essence, does not change: in each film we are witnesses of the story of one or several survivors who struggle desperately to survive in a world every second more hopeless.

There are many examples. From the Resident Evil saga to World War Z or even the AMC with The Walking Dead since 2010, fans of the undead have been pleased with a story whose backbone is governed by the same principles. However, some have taken this "disadvantage" to differentiate themselves from others, as did the great land of zombies, led by Ruben Fleischer in 2009.

The night eats the world, debut work by the Frenchman Dominique Rocher, tackles a perspective rarely seen in the cinema of zombies: that of those who face an apocalypse of the living dead and whose strategy to survive is not to take up arms and fight to the enemy, but to take shelter in the safest place possible and take advantage of everything that place will allow them to survive in a world that, little by little, is rotting away.

This film, one of the great surprises of festivals such as Tribeca, Rotterdam or recently in BiFan, presents the story of Sam (played by the Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie) to whom a box full of old cassettes saves his life. In what seems to be the awkward moment of picking up the things that you left in your ex-partner's apartment, Sam attends a party where someone accidentally hits him in the nose. Slightly knocked out, he enters a room where he will sit in an armchair to recover. After losing consciousness, he wakes up in a place full of blood and impregnated with the smell of death. Everything that surrounds him shows him that he is completely alone in a building in Paris whose surrounding streets are invaded by zombies.

After accepting his terrible reality, Sam begins to analyze, floor by floor, the place where he is trapped. In your exploration, you will find objects that will allow you to extend your life time. It is from this moment that The Night eats the world is entirely supported by Anders Danielsen Lie (Ghosts of the past) who manages to lead us to terror caused by his loneliness and his helplessness only with his eyes, in sequences full of silences or in others, where the only way to express their helplessness and despair is by shouting, playing a battery or even shooting at those non-living beings who have taken everything from them.

His performance is highly benefited with a prominent production design and makeup department that manages to make the streets of Paris a real apocalyptic hell, full of creatures that steal your breath. The film, in addition, is accompanied by the music of composer David Gubitsch, who manages to create sounds that make us feel part of the madness that invades little by little the character of Anders.

While those sequences full of adrenaline in which the protagonist faces non-living beings here are shortages -without being important-, the greatest success of the film by Dominique Rocher is to show that other side of a story of survival, in which the characters deal not only with the tragedy that surrounds them but with their own demons; in an increasingly bleak environment that, little by little, pushes you to accept your reality and realize that the solution is not to sit and wait for the imminent arrival of the end.

In a subgenre in which there are not many new paths to explore, The night eats the world dares to put aside the terror of being persecuted and be surrounded by zombies to explore and exploit the deep fear of finding you alive and completely alone in a apocalyptic world that constantly reminds you that luck is the only thing that has helped you survive.