Rating: D
Dir: Enzo Tedeschi
Star: Ash Ricardo, Paul Michael Ayre, Zoe Carides, Nicholas Hope
a.k.a. Event Zero
This may be the stupidest movie I’ve endured in a long time. I literally felt IQ points leaving my body as I watched it, and had to decompress with some Jerry Springer episodes afterwards. It’s a shame, since it starts reasonably well, and from a technical aspect, is competent. The script though… It begins with a biological attack on the subway in Sydney, which leads to an outbreak of a lethal haemorrhagic fever. With Muslim terrorists being blamed for the attack, Premier Pamela Laird (Carides), is pressured to enact harsh security legislation – and when she demurs, her daughter is kidnapped. But police officer Leyla Nassar (Ricardo) suspects things aren’t what they seem, and with the reluctant help of colleague Owen Stokes (Ayre), begins to uncover the truth.
It all unfolds like a liberal conspiracist’s wet dream. Big Pharma, capitalism, police, racist thugs, right-wing media – all coming together in an octopus-like plot to stage a false-flag event, inflame the masses into violent xenophobia, and take away your freedumbs. Leyla, who ticks all the necessary diversity boxes, is the only one capable of seeing what’s going on. Mind you, it helps those behind the conspiracy are both all-powerful – a sniper guns down a witness within seconds of Leyla talking to her – and an existential threat to society (well, the liberal bits, anyway), while also being staggeringly incompetent, leaving evidence all over the place. The film finishes with a quote from Hermann Göring, because of course it does. Does Godwin’s law apply to movies?
Meanwhile, everything is so freakin’ easy for the heroine, even though she quickly loses all official standing. Mind you, it helps that in Australia, you can kidnap a leading politician by simply driving her off, and nobody seems to notice or care. Leyla then works out where Pamela’s daughter is being kept in two minutes, with the aid of a video and a remarkably convenient subway map. [Also: leading politicians don’t have locks on their phones] That key element of the conspiracy is being secured by one, especially inept guard. You can then drop off your kidnapped leader, again without anyone noticing. All this idiocy unfolds in just ten minutes or so. If you’d told me it was a parody of bad writing, I would believe you.
It’s all the more disappointing, given a solid start, which does a good job of capturing the disjointed and fragmentary chaos which would inevitably erupt in the event of such an attack. The further it goes, however, the further it descends into lunatic, paranoid nonsense. There may have been a point where I’d have embraced that: back before 9/11 when I could enjoy lunatic, paranoid nonsense as harmless entertainment. To be fair, it looks like this was originally made back in 2017, and the themes might have played better then, in a pre-pandemic world. It hasn’t aged well. These days? I’m just tired of it, and certainly don’t want to engage in this kind of thing for amusement purposes.