Zero Day Review
Superbly acted and shot with brilliant economy, Zero Day is every bit as disturbing as it means to be -- and more. First-time writer/director Benjamin_Coccio is so determined to avoid the traditional scapegoats for school violence that he's forced to leave the motivations of his smart, self-aware killers, Andre (Andre_Keuck) and Cal (Calvin_Robertson), nearly completely opaque. That's appropriate for an outsider's perspective, but insufficient, because Zero Day presents itself as the two hyper-articulate adolescents' own video manifesto. Because they make surprisingly little effort to explain why they're planning such a horrific act -- they spend more time exculpating the entertainment media and their seemingly caring, but oblivious, parents -- the film takes on a nihilistic tone. Even the bullying and social ostracization that is generally supposed to be the lot of such unhappy teens is relegated to the background. This is perhaps understandable from a disturbed adolescent's point-of-view, but unacceptable for what one hoped would be a thoughtful examination of the issues at hand. The movie doesn't have the formal rigor of the similarly constructed Blair_Witch_Project, so it's not as though Coccio is evasive simply in a desire to remain steadfast to his antiheroes' limited perspective. In fact, the film's biggest structural fudge, and the biggest gamble Coccio takes, is in showing the school massacre, as captured by security cameras. By straining conceptually to show the act itself, by far the least convincing and most troubling sequence in the movie, Coccio crosses the line from sympathetic exploration into glorification and exploitation. Zero Day is undeniably absorbing and disturbing, and Keuck and Robertson deliver astonishingly naturalistic performances, but in the end, the filmmaker's vagueness of purpose betrays their efforts. Josh Ralske, Rovi
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