Directed by: Xawery Żuławski
Starring: Mikolaj Kubacki, Waleria Gorobets, Sebastian Fabijański, Cezary Pazura
Rating: ★★★★☆
Horror films can be counted on the fingers of one hand in the cinematography of Poland. Andrzej Żuławski has been to date one of the few Polish auteurs to have a flirtation with this genre – Diabeł (The Devil, 1972) is still a relatively unknown showpiece from Żuławski Senior. In this is particular case, the penchant for horror has been handed down from father to son in the family. Żuławski Junior has now gone down in the cinematic history of his country for two reasons. Apokawixa is at the same time the first comedy and zombie film to be ever made in Poland.
Appearances aside, the script of the Warsaw-born director did not come in reaction to the ennui of lockdown, but was conceived before the confinement in COVID-19 pandemic. Irrelevant of the initial intentions of his Żuławski Jr, Apokawixa (It Came from the Water) has potentially everything to become a nonchalant cinematic manifesto for the Generation Z high school students that had to spend the best days of their youth in self-isolation. With that said, It Came from the Water is a gimmicky and vivid tale about the living dead with the global climate strike movement in the background.
Ecologism and the COVID-19 pandemic are not easy topics, but Żuławski Jr makes them pleasurable by funneling the film towards the conventions and tone of American teen comedy film. Ultimately, the storyline is about a high school graduation party thrown by wealthy pupil Kamil Wilk (Mikołaj Kubacki) in his family’s villa on the Baltic coast. Hats off to the director that succeeded in engaging a number of famed Polish thesps into this project including Sebastian Fabijański, Cezary Pazura and Tomasz Kot. Fabijański, especially, is hilarious in the role of Blitz, a crabby but golden-hearted eco-hermit living in a wood.
In retrospect, the poppish finale in previous effort Mowa ptaków (Bird Talk, 2019), with a zombie dance inspired to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, functions as a teaser for his successive film. The zombies that spoil the party in It Came from the Water are not the product of a contagious dark force at work, but a direct consequence of water contamination with Cyanobacteria commonly known also as “blue-green algae”. Such things happen in real life as well. It is hard no think to the recent Oder river environmental disaster that was supposedly caused by a glut of golden algae that killed tons of fish in Central Europe.
Despite not receiving the Golden Lion, It Came from the Water garnered 3 awards at the the 47th edition of the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia and has great potential for distribution outside Poland.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on October 13, 2022