The Park – Review
80 Minutes, Not Rated
Written and Directed by Shal Ngo
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio if we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
After a virus kills all of the Earth’s adults, rival children battle for control of an abandoned theme park.
Another day, another post-apocalyptic drama…
…or is it?
This time, instead of society as a whole simply wasting away into a shadow of its former glory like in material such as The Road, The Last of Us, The Book of Eli, etc., The Park gives us an apocalyptic vision straight out of Peter Pan.
The Park shows us what happens when a virus spreads rapidly through the population and kills only those who have reached puberty. So like the mythical Lost Boys, or the children in the classic Star Trek episode “Miri,”, the children never grow up.
Physically, that is. But behaviorally, the children have adapted to a world without adults with varying degrees of humanity; some become the pre-pubescent versions of Mad Max, while others remain childlike in their innocence and trust (to mostly detrimental ends).
Regardless of which path they choose, however, once puberty hits, life ends.
Ines and Bui encounter (are captured by) Kuan, who is smart, but not violent, and who is determined to help her fellow survivors remember their childlike wonder by restoring an amusement/water park to some semblance of operation.
Ines is an orphan from before who had become obsessed with survival even before the apocalypse, and has transitioned well into this new world, leading kids older than herself as they fight for food and security, even if that involves killing one another.
Ines is torn between her desire to reclaim her lost childhood and the need to survive, even if that survival is an illusion based on the evergreen trope of a (kid) genius who has a cure for the virus.
By moving the apocalypse back to humanities pre-pubescent years, writer/director Shal Ngo emphasizes how easy it is for us to slip away from the thin veneer of civilization given the right circumstances, even for children. This is an exceptional debut.
Chloe Guidry as Ines is wonderful here and almost certainly has a bright future ahead of her. Her depiction of a tortured soul is glorious and worth every second of her screen time.
Carmina Garay’s Kuan is equal parts innocence and persistence as she tries to bring Ines around to her more optimistic point of view.
The Park is definitely worth the watch.
The Park is now available on VOD and stars Chloe Guidry, Carmina Garay, Nhedrick Jabier, and Carli McIntyre.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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