by Derek Milman
These are all weak and wounded individuals, too easily swayed by temptation, too easily pushed down that well into the dark side. And it can be argued the very notion of what innocence is, and its slow dissolution, is as much a Moldavia trademark as calla lilies and crystal skulls. But is there anything more innocent than a child? And is there anything more chilling to watch than the slow, utterly realistic erosion of a child’s innocence unfolding on-screen?
Moldavia has done zombie movies aplenty: Undead Nocturne, The Famishing, Flesh of the Loveless, Carol’s Feast, Everyone Got Eaten on Christmas Eve, The Dead Don’t Devour, Zombie Dawn, The Dead Rise on Sunday, Plague of the Damned, Day of Decay, Prey For Me, Where’s Quentin?, Unburied, The Faces in the Trees (it can be argued) and even sort of . . . if you think about it . . . Druid Flu.
All of these are better movies than Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun: the writing is stronger, the pacing is tighter, the cinematography more striking, the costumes better designed, the settings more interesting, the direction less lazy; they’re more fun, less boring, and make more sense.
What all those films don’t have is Dario Heyward.
It’s no secret by now that Lucien Heyward cast his young son as the lead role in Zombie Children, for the first time directing one of his own children and for the first time directing a child at all. For now, let’s ignore the rampant rumors of a troubled production (a crew member was killed in a fall during filmings, there have been allegations of abuse) that managed to waft outside those impenetrable castle walls. After all, who really knows what goes on in there?
Moldavia’s last few efforts have been easily dismissed, and rightly; they’re weak. Lucien Heyward’s vision may be wavering of late, but it is extant. With Zombie Children, Heyward seems to have reined himself in from some of the heavy indulgences that plagued his last few films. Oddly, and maybe even subversively, the film he’s given us here is as much a character study as it is a straight-up horror. The horror is coyly intertwined with the grim fate, powerful sadness, and reflective soul of a country farm boy infected by a virus that kills the brain but keeps the mouth munching.
You’ve seen it all before: Heyward has taken every trope out of the zombie playbook, simply shaken it all up in a blender, and poured it out again. There’s a mysterious plague. People rise from the dead. People get eaten. More people die and get eaten. People run through fields. There’s barely a plot at all here to hang on to. What you haven’t seen before is the most genuinely harrowing performance ever put on-screen by a child, all the more so for its being completely and totally removed from the movie. It is its own entity, a separate generator, existing at once inside and out of the picture itself, daring you to forget about it.
Heyward plays Alastair, in a mostly wordless performance. As the son of grizzled, plow-pushing, unloving parents existing in a fuzzy future Dust Bowl, he’s the first bitten—by a half-rotted skeletal creature with loose tenderized skin (as always, the creature work by Jasper Raines and Barbara Pandova is outstanding) hiding in a hayloft. As the Alpha Zombie infects all his classmates in a bright-red schoolhouse that could have been whisked out of an episode of Little House on the Prairie (the movie either wants us to think it exists out of time or never decided on a time period), it becomes kids vs. adults in a sort of zombie retelling of Children of the Corn. Alastair reluctantly leads his undead mates on a messy crusade to lunch on all their cold, strict, uncaring adult guardians.
In its one unique though superfluous touch, the child zombies silently worship the sun, and take some sort of solace, even supernatural power, in its warm autumn rays. While this is never satisfactorily explained, it does provide some arresting images of predatory zombie children standing in a cornfield, hypnotized and recharging, framed by the large red orb of the titular harvest sun.
While the movie itself is terrible, what will elevate it to cult status is the idea of a zombie child (not lumbering and staggering like the zombies of lore, but quick, brutal, and agile) who is all too aware of his diminishing humanity, and abhors the monster he’s slowly becoming. Through the varying emotions that crisscross his face, we see a young character accepting that he will never mature; that he will never attain the wisdom of adulthood reached by even the weakest of his hapless victims. He is futureless, frozen forever in his undead adolescence. No other actor in the world could have portrayed this with such heartbreaking truth than Heyward, even as he’s strangled with a mostly unintelligible narrative. As the story unravels to reveal a specious nonstarter, we begin to realize this isn’t fiction: this is an accidental documentary about a father trying and failing to understand his own son.
This is certainly the most quizzical work done by Moldavia’s longtime cinematographer Jip Bekker. His tight, mostly handheld close-ups through backlit dust and grit are an arty departure for the studio, and mark a sharp contrast from the Dutch-angled medium shots of Moldavia’s past works. This technique is particularly effective in the Curdling—one of the goriest and most disquieting ever in a Moldavia film, but all the more frustrating because it feels common, and undeserved by the mostly lifeless eighty-six minutes that precede it.
Peeping Toms and internet fanboys may appreciate the unintentional airing of a mysteriously famous family’s dirty laundry, but watching as Heyward Senior, through the lens of his frank, searching camera, attempts to bond with his son is a grisly affair. Alastair begins wasting away before our very eyes—as if we’re actually witnessing Dario Heyward grow more and more disenchanted with his father after seeing him for what he really is. Is this art or entertainment? Horror or docudrama? Or is it meant to be both?
Besides the startling physical transformation of Alastair (the boy must have lost close to fifteen pounds during the course of the film, which wastes away his face and hollows out his eyes), the bruises and contusions that begin to appear on his face, arms, and neck seem all too real. If it’s Moldavia’s makeup crew that decided Ashcan Realism was the new game here, and moved boldly in that direction, perhaps they should remember their hammy B-movie roots. If Coreen Colchester (Ondine McPhaden) really looked like she was cannibalizing herself in Meat and Greet, would the movie have been as fun?
There’s a moment when Alastair realizes he can no longer keep going; something other than sheer survival takes over his instincts: beholding the beauty of a young, still-human girl. He sees in her the innocence he’s lost. By now, this young actor has plumbed the depths of his role so adroitly, even his breathing has become a staccato congested rattling of attempted inhales—the very sound and rhythm of life trying to stave off death. A single tear rolls out of his eye, down his nose, onto the face of this girl, splashing her unblemished skin in shocking slo-mo. Has he just infected her? Or is this the last drop of his humanity finally unleashing itself from his decaying core?
The moment is unforgettable, agonizing, blistering, and all too real.
But it isn’t much fun to watch at all.
Chapter Fourteen
Duelers
THE PARTY REVELERS, GATHERED ON THE EAST LAWN, BEGIN JUMPING into the stone fountain, instantly destroying all the lovingly made costumes, smearing makeup, and trying (at least for a short while longer) to fight off the coming hangovers that will grip us all in their queasy vise for the rest of the day. I lose my mask in the fray.
A variety of creatures, their transitory magic whittled away by the new morning, pile in too, displacing the water, soaking the grass. A former vampire is making a big show out of drinking the “piss” from one of the peeing angel statues while everyone laughs at him.
I get flung out by a surge after a green-faced Martian, polyester alien pants rolled up to the knees, jumps in. And then I’m on my ass in the mud and the wet, trampled grass, my devil tail torn and dragging, heavy with water. I crawl away from the morass, and when I look back I see these ravaged monsters, like pummeled dreams, splashing around in firewater: the blazing morning merging all prismatic with the gushing fountain.
I just lie there f
or a second, not really wanting to move.
Oren wheels himself over. He peers down at me, keeping away from the scrum. Still wearing his fake mustache, but at an off tilt, he’s out of costume otherwise, wrapped in his favorite lobster kimono. “You’re drunk,” he says disgustedly.
“You’re an imbecile. I’ll be sober in a few hours.”
“What a fine studio chief you’ll make. Look at you: doing our father proud.”
“Shut up, Oren.”
He guffaws. “Still seeing things?”
“Like a vision of Dad telling me how useless you are?”
Oren’s face twitches.
“That’s right,” I say, flipping over onto my belly, starting to cackle, “even your own hallucinogens found a way to mock you.”
“I’m not the useless one,” he hisses. “Dad didn’t try and drown me like a litter of unwanted kittens. I practically had to convince him not to stuff you in a laundry bag and throw you into the lake.”
“Funny, I remember you doing nothing. The only thing you do flawlessly.”
I claw through the mud, trying to get to my feet so Oren’s voice stops booming from above me.
Oren circles around me with his wheelchair, Baby Jane style. “Dad knew you were a waste. He’d tell me so all the—”
“And yet he left the studio to me. Didn’t he, Oren?”
“Pity is a powerful thing.”
I get myself to my knees. “As the resident sad clown, I’m sure you’d know.”
Oren rolls right up to me. His face is really red now. Being called a clown gets under his skin like nothing else. “Hugo. Aida. Dad. So many people around here met their ends thinking you were nothing but a whiny, willful little succubus—”
“Incubus, you moron. Succubus is a female demon.”
“I know.”
I’m starting to hear those hornets buzzing. “Bringing up Hugo again. Is that all you’ve got? You should have just killed yourself, man. But Oren . . . you even failed at that. The irony’s a little much.”
People are starting to gather around.
“You don’t get it,” he says. “You were the mistake. You were never meant to exist. Your whole life is just the result of a dirty little crime.”
Now I get to my feet. “What does that mean?”
It’s Oren’s turn to cackle at me.
“What does that mean?”
Oren turns his wheelchair around, facing away from me. But I grab it. “How’s your ankle? All better?”
“Get away from me, Dario! Go suck the life out of someone else.” He looks over his shoulder at me and sneers. “Maybe it’s Hayley’s turn.”
I race his wheelchair toward the fountain. People who are still cavorting in there turn to see us, and they jump out in one quick, desperate jumble as I slam the wheelchair into the side of the fountain, tipping it forward. Oren goes flying out, splashing into the water. He quickly stands, soaked, tripping over himself.
“Oh, look!” I yell, pointing. “It’s a miracle! He can walk!”
Everyone stares at us, jaws dropped. Oren spits and coughs. He climbs awkwardly out of the fountain, giving me a murderous look.
Then he charges me.
We slam into each other and fall to the ground. His hands close around my throat. I turn him over, my hands around his throat. He turns me back over, his hands gripping my throat again. We’re literally taking turns strangling each other.
“You’re a parasite!” he roars. “A barn fire has more compassion!”
“You’re the King Midas of Shit! Everything you touch rots! I’m embarrassed we’re related—that I have any connection to you at all!”
A couple of crewmen pull us apart.
Oren looks totally nuts with his hair all wet, spiked up.
“Go on,” I say, “convince everyone here you’re not a clown now.”
He points at me, his sleeve dripping. “I challenge you to a duel,” he says, chest puffed out, spitting on the ground.
“You challenge me to a duel?”
An embarrassed sort of exhaustion has fallen over these proceedings, but I can’t help laughing—even harder than before—a vicious laugh I cannot contain.
No one notices Oren run over and grab a musket that’s buried in a blanket in his wheelchair. He points it at me. But this just makes me laugh harder. I have literally never seen a human being look more ridiculous.
Then he shoots me.
There’s a popping report, a small cloud of smoke. I feel a sharp tug on my shoulder as I fly backward, landing hard on my back. At first I think: I can’t believe a blank would have that much firepower. But there’s a dark circle of blood spreading on my shirt. And then I realize my fuckhead brother just shot me.
Like a fallen soldier on a battle frigate, I’m carried upstairs into my chambers by ten of the ablest crewmen. I hear Oren whispering to the special effects supervisor who handles the firearms: My God, it was a squib load!
That’s not good. That’s when a piece of ammunition gets stuck in the barrel when a gun is only supposed to fire blanks. That’s how Brandon Lee died making The Crow.
They strip my bed and lay me down, cutting away my costume with scissors, and inspect the wound. Oren kneels beside the bed, pale as death, as people fill the room.
“What were you doing with a musket?” I say weakly.
“It was a leftover prop—it was sitting in the wheelchair. . . .”
“Don’t you even know how a duel works? You plan it in advance! You take a certain number of steps, turn, and fire. Both people have to be armed!”
“I was just so damn angry. Is he going to be okay?” Oren shouts at a production assistant tending to me—someone apparently with medical experience.
The wound isn’t serious, despite all the blood. The musket is so old, it just lodged a piece of an iron ball into my upper shoulder. It didn’t go in too deep, and it didn’t take a piece of my costume into the wound. I got a recent tetanus shot, so they just have to dig out the remains of the ball with tweezers, disinfect the wound, and bandage me up. I’ll survive. They just don’t have anything to numb the pain with except Tylenol.
“Can we get him a dram of rum?” Oren yells.
“A dram of rum? We’re not in the Napoleonic Wars!”
After my wound is dressed, Oren chases everyone out and sits on the floor, beside my bed, while I lie there aching and bandaged and tired and still bleeding. Oren seems destroyed. For a while, we don’t speak.
Then: “We have to start forgiving one another,” he says. “For everything.”
I stare at the ceiling. “I know.”
“I forgive you,” says Oren.
I blink at him. “That’s real big of you.”
“I meant—”
“I forgive you too.” I scratch at my bandages. “I can’t believe you fired a weapon at me.”
“I was sixty-two percent certain that gun wasn’t loaded.”
I look at him, my lips pursed. “Part of you must really want me dead.”
He lays his head extremely awkwardly on my knee. “Dario. No. No.”
I think about him standing in the bathroom doorway. Poisoning me. Jumping off the roof. Shooting me. We don’t bring out the best in each other, that’s for sure.
“The studio will be toast if there’s infighting like this,” I say.
“You’re right.”
“I need you to be my brother, not my enemy. I need you to stop fighting me.” I lay my hot palm over my eyes. “I can’t believe the horrible things we say to each other.”
I don’t know who I am sometimes when it comes to Oren. It makes me sick.
“I know,” he agrees. “You’re the only one I’m ever this cruel to.”
I look at him, warily. Likewise.
“And I can’t believe how good it feels,” he says.
“Because you’re holding on to so much resentment!” I shout.
“It scared me how quickly you became callous. You have some of Dad in you.”
That’s something I never really considered before. Maybe he’s right. And quite honestly, given what my dad was capable of, that scares the shit out of me.
“What did you mean about me being a dirty crime?”
“Nothing. I was just angry,” he replies.
He moves away from the bed and begins to pace the room, his hands on his head. The shades are still drawn, and his movements cast warped, spidery shapes on the walls.
“You were just angry?” I say. “Really? ’Cause no one tells me shit.”
“Let it go,” he mutters, waving his hands around.
I sit up, wincing a little. “This is Moldavia, and you’re still a Heyward. You will have a place here. That’s my promise to you. You’re not really a clown. Okay?”
Oren nods at me, gulping air, trying to gain control over the shock washing over him.
“You may have shot me with a musket,” I say, “but you also led me to that folder with all those awful letters. That was worse in a way. And so was burning Dad’s treatment. That was a terrible thing to do.”
“I didn’t burn any treatment,” says Oren.
“What?”
“He never wrote a treatment for a sequel! You said it yourself: We don’t do sequels. I pitched the idea myself to Dad, but he was never interested.”
I really hate the pitiful expression on his face right now.
“The truth is,” he says, “I always felt bad about what happened when you were a kid. You were right. I just stood there and did nothing.”
I close my eyes. “Oh.”
“I wanted to make it up to you. I wanted to reunite you and Dad. I wrote the script myself. Dad refused to look at it. That’s what I burned.”
My eyelids flutter. I exhale a stuttering stream of breath. This breaks what’s left of my shattered heart. I hate to admit it, but it gave me a flicker of hope that my dad wanted me to come back, that he hadn’t forgotten me, that he forgave me for leaving. But that was just another lie. I fell for it again.