Finally, ‘Malnazidos’ appears on the billboard, a horror, action and adventure film co-directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera and Alberto de Toro that was seen a couple of years ago at the Sitges 2020 festival. With a script based on the novel ‘Night of the Dead in 1938’, the new Telecinco Cinema production is thrown into the void with the complicated concept of fitting a zombie story set in the Spanish Civil War. It opens on March 11.
The proposal itself is strange enough to also come sponsored by Mediasetwhose forays into horror movies have always been under the umbrella of Juan Antonio Bayona and the eternal variations of his ‘El orfanato’ (2007), but the fact is that the premiere of the film is also accompanied by a video game shooter that will arrive on PlayStation consoles on the same date as the appearance of the film in theaters.
The way of integrating two great concepts such as Civil War and undead can be strangebut if both are analyzed separately, it does not stop making sense in Iberian cinematography, since the historical conflict has been one of the main themes (and slabs) of its cultural approach to the seventh art, while the country has had a special relation to the zombie genre.
The long legacy of zombie cinema in Spain
Beginning with the first great film inspired by George A. Romero’s masterpiece ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968) by Jorge Grau, the chilling ‘Do not profane the sleep of the dead’ (1972 ), to the success of the ‘Rec’ saga (2007), the reanimated, infected and infected have always been a key and highly recognized presence in our cinemawith big international bets such as ‘Extinción’ (2015), ‘Carriers’ (2009) or the well-known co-production ’28weeks later’ (28 Weeks Later, 2008) by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
This time the plot delves into the full conflict, after months of bloody fighting that have left behind thousands of dead in the trenches. Jan Lozano is a captain of the fifth brigade who falls prisoner and his only chance to escape the death sentence is to face an impossible mission in the enemy camp. Here ‘Malnazidos’ already marks its first órdago making the protagonist of the national sidesomething unusual in a work about the country at war.
However, a greater than expected danger will force two guerrillas from rival sides to unite against a common adversary from the graves, in the purest of John Carpenter’s cinemawhich in addition to marking part of the tone of the film gave way to a theme from the soundtrack that he composed for his film ‘Vampires’ (Vampires, 1998) and that here fits perfectly with the geographically displaced Weird Western pulp spirit that Ruiz Caldera manages to convey and of Bull.
‘Malnazidos’ has a great cast, led by a charismatic MIki Esparbeand one Aura Garrido consolidating their unconditional presence in the fantastic made in Spain, accompanied by Luis Callejo, Álvaro Cervantes, Jesús Carroza, Maria Botto and Sergio Torricowho endow some well-cared characters with humanity in a script that, treading on a terrain as complicated as providing gray areas to sides that history has redrawn, ends up coming out gracefully pulling sarcasm and some well-measured strokes of humor.
A remarkable sample of fantastic cinema made in Spain
And it is that the grateful and surprising dose of costumbrista humor, so recurrent in works of this depth who end up experiencing the José Mota syndrome, in favor of good and profuse action sequences, shootings and deadly attacks, gives way to a very solid horror war adventure with wicks from both ‘Overlord’ (2018) and ‘La Vaquilla’ (1985), with some echoes of works of the genre from the opening sequence, where a toxic gas is used to turn people into zombies in the style of ‘The return of the living dead‘ (1985).
‘Malnazidos’ drinks from that tradition in which Nazi soldiers and zombies appear, going back to ‘Shock waves‘ (Shock Waves, 1977) and the most traditional ‘The tomb of the living dead‘ (1981) in scenes of dead people in the water that could appear in said works. But the one who receives the most caresses is the father of the roost, George A. Romero, who is quoted from script lines at specific moments, like that electrified fence full of reanimated taken from ‘the land of the living dead‘ (Land of the Dead, 2005).
But the script knows how to separate itself from other imitations because it manages well in a tone of fantastic historical fiction, using the Nazi presence in the Iberian Peninsula to create a tone similar to the ‘Indiana Jones’ saga that gives it a great sense of showmanship often absent in similar approaches to the genre. With some gore details and confidence in the viewer to play with the trite tropes of the genre, ‘Malnazidos’ is another great addition to the successful tradition of zombie cinema in Spain.