If you’ve been paying attention to horror film and TV at the moment you’ll know that ‘80s nostalgia has taken over. The kids who grew up in that decade are now the up and coming filmmakers and their work is steeped in the culture of the time. So Guerrilla, from Shane Ryan, is a love letter to the decade.
Guerrilla is a strange work. It feels much more like a mood piece than a narrative story in as far as it has a barely sketched plot. It’s much more concerned with its characters wandering about the deserted land, surviving, conjuring sometimes effective images but lacking enough of anything to really keep you interested. Split into several sections with headings like The Virus Outbreak and The Others it plays out wordlessly without much of a hint as to where it’s going. We don’t actually get a defined main character until a third of the way through, other characters just showing up and wandering about for a section until we move on. Luckily, the score is strong, full of ‘80s synths and it feels like it could have been the soundtrack to many kid’s programmes and films of the decade. Guerrilla also makes good use of its settings, finding sparse and barren landscapes for the characters to traverse, a huge section of abandoned piping being particularly impressive.
The film could do with building up a much stronger narrative, especially considering the film ends by saying To be continued. What plot there is concerns a young boy who is immune to a viral zombie outbreak (though we only see one or two zombies in one chapter and never threatening people) who saves a girl from being attacked by two other girls in spectacular, bloody, samurai sword fashion. There is a lot of time spent with people just wandering about the landscape which does start to grate a bit.
Guerrilla has some style to it and a couple of strong aspects but its lack of narrative and character hold it back.
GUERRILLA (SHORT FILM) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SHANE RYAN / STARRING: ADRIAN BAEZ, RANDY BURKE, CARISSA CARLBERG, LUCY DORADO / RELEASE DATE: TBC
