Zombie apocalypse meets “Lord of the Flies” in “Parvulos,” the latest from adventurous Mexican genre specialist Isaac Ezban. Here, a familiar dystopian near-future of survival amid scarcity and violence is seen through the eyes of three underage brothers who’ve had to largely invent their own “new normal,” for lack of surviving adult minders.
By turns grotesque, whimsical, brutal and poignant, this episodic tale is more consistently interesting than riveting. Yet somehow its wayward, tonally diverse approach adds up to a distinctive hybrid that lingers in the mind, and should win over horror fans open to something more complicated than your basic undead gorefest. Not that there’s any lack of grisly (and gristly) content here.
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A brief prologue of wildlife footage has a child talking in voiceover about lessons learned in Natural History class, though his father countered them by saying the only real constants in life are “family and change.” Once we meet our protagonists, Dad — let alone a standard societal institution like school — is nowhere to be seen. Living in a remote gated compound in a forested area of Jalisco, are brothers Salvador (Felix Farid Escalante), Oliver (Leonardo Cervantes) and Benjamin (Mateo Ortega), for whom such things are emblems of a past fast disappearing from their memories.
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A virus and its mutations wiped out most of the global human population not so long ago, though it seems a long time in their short lives. Remaining isolated for both safety and lack of other options, the trio have had to improvise solutions for various problems in daily life, the results underlining youth’s innocence in somewhat macabre ways.
Teenage elder Salvador, who’s lost one leg below the knee under circumstances that remain mysterious for a while, has appointed himself the tough-loving patriarch, an authority that does not go unquestioned by his alternately squeamish, skittish and impatient younger siblings. It is he who plots out risky expeditions to gather water and food, determining what crossbow-felled prey becomes their protein source — even when it’s some critter Benja had hoped to claim as a pet. He and argumentative pubescent Oliver prevent that junior member of the household from seeing the “monster” locked up in the basement, thinking him too young. When the boy’s curiosity overrides caution, however, we grasp with considerable alarm what really happened to the parents. (Suffice it to say, if those characters could talk, their discourse would probably be limited to “Braaaaains.”)
Occurring well into the progress here, that revelation shifts “Parvulos” (whose full on-screen title is “Parvulos: Hijos del Apocalipsis,” or “Preschoolers: Children of the Apocalypse”) into a realm of ghoulish domestic satire, with traditional family-unit dynamics turned upside-down. It is not the first or last time Ezban and co-writer Ricardo Aguardo-Fentanes spring a major shift in dynamics, often driven by the introduction of new characters.
We move into different terrain when the boys suddenly face an uninvited guest in the form of pushy solo stranger Valeria (Clara Adell). She immediately — albeit briefly — takes charge, partly by recognizing and exploiting Salvador’s neglected formative sexual appetites. There’s a short, cruel “hunting expedition” interlude that provides Juan Carlos Remolina with an extended cameo. Then things move into straight-up harrowing action-thriller terrain with the arrival of roaming predators led by Noe Hernandez. Finally, the narrative acquires a parting air of tragic pathos.
Whether essentially dealing in supernatural horror (“Evil Eye”), sci-fi (“Parallel”) or “Twilight Zone”-style fantasy (“The Similars,” “The Incident”), Ezban seldom takes the most direct path toward conventional genre payoffs. Here too, the idiosyncracy of approach can sometimes seem too indulgent and pleased with itself, distracted by a string of loosely connected offbeat ideas, while basics of suspense and pacing momentum go neglected. Nevertheless, the film’s diversity of tactics somehow does succeed in world-building, investing us more deeply in impressively played juvenile figures than we’d realized. The combination travels through black comedy and gore and whatnot to a surprisingly emotional, near-epic cumulative impact.
As ever, the director stamps it all with his unique aesthetic preferences, which are very deliberate if not always explicable. His frequent penchant for color desaturated to the brink of monochrome is on full display in Rodrigo Sandoval Vega Gil’s oft-striking widescreen photography. Adelle Achar’s production design has fun imagining what a home long maintained by young boys would come to look like, while there’s an eccentric mix of choral and other effects in the original score by Camilla Uboldi and Edy Lan. Robert Ortiz contributed the creature makeup and prosthetics, which are not the main event here but do deliver quite enough ick value for those who’d be dissatisfied otherwise.
Among the quirky details that will delight some and puzzle others is that apparently the only film our heroes have access to (played via VCR fueled by foot-pedaled generator) is Ari Folman’s 2013 “The Congress,” a very different, semi-animated future vision inspired by the work of Polish sci-fi literary master Stanislaw Lem.