Finally! We’re Crossing our Fingers for What’s Looking to be the Filipino-made ‘Zombie’ Film We’ve Been Waiting For

GLOBAL RELEASE—All eyes are on the recently-released trailer of Filipino-produced and -made film Outside after it landed on social media to great acclaim and raves from fans of the genre. Hardly the first Filipino film released about the ‘undead’, a good number of which are actually readily available on the platform, among other avenues, Outside, based solely on what the trailer sneak peek served us with, is looking to be a genre win for us, fans of Filipino films—and artistry as a whole. A long time coming, one might say, as the film makes its way to streaming powerhouse, Netflix this October.

“You can’t keep out what’s already inside.”

On the trailer released September 19, this ominous line from what is touted as Netflix Philippines’ first zombie feature hints on the horrifying tale of a family thrust in an undisclosed dystopian Philippine setting. Directed by acclaimed TV commercial and content filmmaker Carlo Ledesma, the film promises to deliver a “gripping psychological horror experience” when it premieres globally.

The story follows a family of four led by Francis, played by Sid Lucero. With his wife Iris, played by Beauty Gonzales, and two young sons Josh (Marco Masa) and Lucas (Aiden Tyler Patdu), they seek to find refuge to a secluded farmhouse from what was later on revealed as a devastating zombie outbreak.

Netflix Philippines’ press statement details, with pride, the trailer with beautifully-photographed scenes setting up the family’s impending traumatic journey, rife with emotional and psychological conflicts compounded by the film’s post-apocalyptic milieu.

Right at the Netflix APAC Southeast Asia Showcase in Indonesia last June, Ledesma, behind a number of films to his name in the same genre, emphasized how Outside is more than just a zombie film but a “terrifying psychological thriller” that goes deep on the myriad of struggles of a family caught in the midst of a zombie pandemic. “At its core, it’s a film about a family’s survival.” Ledesma highlighted,“It explores how a family could fall apart, and it played out my worst fears as a father.”

Ledesma’s breakthrough in the horror genre came with his found-footage film debut The Tunnel in 2011, which was then followed by Sunod in 2019 and the horror-comedy short The Kapre. As he describes it, Outside serves as his “most personal project to date”, drawing inspiration from his experiences growing up in Negros and his own feelings of isolation that have sprung up during the pandemic, a period when the idea for the film began to take form.

Outside promises to bring this harrowing tale of survival in its global premiere on the streaming platform. Joining Lucero and Gonzales are the special participation of Filipino actors Enchong Dee and Joel Torre.

With the release of the trailer, the Internet has let out praise for the film’s visual promise, and for good reason. Some even called it a “must” in Philippine cinema while others have quickly seen Lucero’s acting prowess too good to be unnoticed.

Others are also going beyond the film’s aesthetic and creative merits and are zooming in on how Outside, and the genre, could be taken as a significant venue to talk about social justice, particularly in the region of Negros that serves as its eerie backdrop.

It can be remembered that in the past, stories of the undead have been seen as an allegory on the uprising of the “working and lower classes” in revolt to the moneyed and powerful in the upper echelons of society. Train to Busan, for instance, was set in a bullet train where the the virus started infecting those at the lower segments of the vehicle, representative of society as a whole, while the elite in the norther regions of the train wait in fear, even disgust and judgment—an apparent “critique on corporate callousness“.

In fact, if we are to pore over details of what constitutes the emergence and rise of “zombie literature”, the very myth of it is hinged on actual slavery in colonial Haiti, where Amy Wilentz writes that zombies are a “very logical offspring of New World slavery.” It was a time when in the face of brutality in France’s occupation, especially in the sugar plantations, “Suicide was the slave’s only way to take control over his or her own body.” But as the masters at the time thought of suicide as a form of “thievery” of the slaves’ services, fear was actually weaponized to “warn those who were despondent not to go too far.”

As Wilentz writes, “The zombie is a dead person who cannot get across to lan guinée (literally Guinea, or West Africa). This final rest—in green, leafy, heavenly Africa, with no sugarcane to cut and no master to appease or serve—is unavailable to the zombie. To become a zombie was the slave’s worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand.”

Going deeper into the lore of the zombies and how it actually seeps into present day psyche outside the confines of pop culture, is a discussion for another day. This, we say, is the beauty and curse of having a platform as renowned and wide-reaching as Netflix. Artistry gets celebrated and the use of this very artistic vision and voice are also being held up to a particular standard.

How the “zombie” in Ledesma’s worldview as a filmmaker was used and how this promise of a beautifully produced film of the popular genre is to be met, we can only wait when the film drops on the platform next month. And we will surely be watching closely.