Amazing Fantasy Fest 2025 Coverage
Zombie Chronicles review
Three high energy zombie movies in one.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Zombie Chronicles
Directed by Marvin Suarez
Written by Marvin Suarez
Starring Katie Maguire, Jeff Moffitt, Celeste Santoya, Lavrenti Lopes, Nora Moutrane, Nicolas Palmieri and Lindsay Olivia Travis
Zombie Chronicles Review
There are a lot of interesting things going on with Zombie Chronicles. That goes for both on and off screen. We’ll start with the out of frame stuff. Zombie Chronicles had a fascinating journey to this year’s Amazing Fantasy Fest. It was filmed many years ago…over fifteen by the count of writer/director Marvin Suarez who was on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Zombie Chronicles is actually three of Suarez’s short films fused together into one connected world. They were known as The Infected, Infected Survivors and The Case File. Each chapter revolves around a unique zombie outbreak in New York City. Suarez, a former NYC police officer who has been making movies since he was a teenager, wanted to capture the chaos he witnessed as a cop on 9/11…just with zombies. Which…as an elevator pitch…yeah I would want to see that too.
Suarez stepped away from filmmaking for a while which is why this new mix of Zombie Chronicles is making festival rounds in 2025. The shorts aren’t exactly organically fused together…which means end credits pop up and then the overall movie continues on in a different form. It was odd…but the story shifts to a new perspective anyway. The first section of the film is actually the third of the three that Suarez filmed. In original form it served as a prequel to the more connected events of the other two segments. Here…it serves as a standout opening that contains, arguably, the best idea in a film full of interesting ideas. It wasn’t until the Q&A that the dots were connected on how that concept fit into the later chapters…but it was worth listening to because it’s one of the more original zombie ideas I’ve heard.
The story begins in a suburban home. There are two birthdays being celebrated in the family that lives there…but something is incredibly wrong. We see demons surrounding the family at every turn…whispering to them…commanding them to act on their most disgusting desires. Zombies do show up eventually…but, in this first story, they take a backseat to the demon concept that fuels the narrative. There is some depraved stuff happening in this house. A kind of in-your-face version of finding the darkness under the picket fence visage idea that is suitably unsettling.
The concept is more interesting once it’s fully understood (which, again, I didn’t until the Q&A). The zombies and demons are the same thing. Zombie bites, as we know them historically, are portals that allow the demons to enter the host. It’s a cool idea. Watching the demons break down their targets before entering them is a great horror concept. It ties perfectly into how we see the zombies act in the latter two shorts…both of which were filmed first. In a subgenre not known for innovation…Zombie Chronicles comes up with a fascinating one.
After the debauchery of the opening short are complete…Zombie Chronicles jumps forward in time. The infection is spreading across the city. We follow a team of paramedics trying to help, then survive, the zombie apocalypse. Given what we learn about the zombies in the opening it should come as no surprise that these aren’t your standard Romero-like shambling zombies. They retain your memories and act on their deepest, most evil desires. It’s somewhat like The Sadness…a movie that came out well after these shorts were shot.
The third short has us following a police officer trying to reconnect with her husband and young son. This is where the story begins to loop together in more interesting ways. Things circle around to fill in gaps in the latter two stories…leaving us with a feeling of total chaos on the streets of New York. Plenty of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme moments as parts of the story catch up or blow past things we’ve seen from a different angle. In totality, the three films contained within Zombie Chronicles tell one full, original zombie story. With a unique premise and an urgent, ground level examination of a zombie apocalypse.
I used the word urgent…frantic will do just as well. Zombie Chronicles is a high-energy affair from start to finish. Even scenes about a birthday party are shot with the same moving camera and loud noises that the city-wide outbreak scenes are. It never lets up. It also manages to capture a pure zombie film feeling. There are nods to classic zombie films here and there…but it’s the feel of the outbreak that pays the most homage. There are moments where Zombie Chronicles evokes the feel of a Romero classic. That’s not easy to do. If it was I’d have said it about any number of zombie movies released in the last several years.
It all might be too much for some viewers. The “shorts” as I’ve referred to them are quite long on their own. They add up to nearly two hours…which is a long time to watch cameras shake and characters run for their lives. Keeping the energy turned up to eleven the entire time is an impressive feat. But it’s also a lot.
What’s also a lot is a style choice that Suarez makes throughout the three films. Everywhere you would normally see a cut to another camera shot…Zombie Chronicles goes to black. It comes back with the next shot…goes to black when it’s finished…and repeats the pattern. I’ve never seen this done before. My first reaction was that it was a bit much. But it did have the, I assume, desired effect of making each shot choice matter. There are no throwaway cuts here. Angles and shots change with purpose. And they sink in much more than quick cuts to a close-up and back to a wide shot would. But it’s a lot of going in and out of black screens. When those shots are change rapidly…well…you can imagine how it looks.
Scare Value
The fifteen years that have passed since any of Zombie Chronicles was shot have given it a cool old-school aesthetic. It’s up to you whether all of the creative choices work…but it’s undeniable that they make Zombie Chronicles feel unlike anything else on the market. The cast is good…and large. The scale feels large despite an almost non-existent budget. There’s something amazing about what can be accomplished with a camera and a dream. This dream certainly won’t be for everyone…but it is dreaming of something new.
