Director: Russ Emanuel
Writer: Emile Haris
Cast: Catherine LaSalle, Lilly Ivring, Sean Kenney, Bailey Sorrel, Gilles Stricher
Running time: 1hr 33mins
For the last five years, I have been suggesting politely that our collective trauma at the hands of Covid-19 might make a great basis for a horror film. The uncanny lens of the genre provides us with a safe-ish space to come to terms with the most troubling aspects of our waking lives, and oh boy, do we ever need to come to terms with the legacy of the coronavirus.
Just as was the case in the wake of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the political and social mainstream are demonstrably determined to sweep any lessons from the lockdown period under the carpet. While on the surface, there is a kind of quaint absurdity to these efforts (the de facto banning the term ‘lockdown’ on the BBC tea-time quizzing staple Pointless is a particularly feeble example), this steadfast determination to move on (read: erase) the pandemic from our recent memories contributes to much more serious and dangerous ideological projects. From the further decimation of state healthcare systems – without which millions more would have died – to the cutting of what remains of the social security net, and the demonisation of the many people now living with some form of life-changing condition resulting from Covid.
In the midst of this, there is an opportunity to make films that speak about the waking nightmare we are still enduring. For example, I would love to bring a story to life about a food courier expected to maintain their employment to appease an unsympathetic landlord, despite the slow spread of an undead pandemic, for example – and while I lack the time/skills/funds to make that a reality, I’d also happily settle for watching someone else’s take on that idea.
In the final moments of Staycation, Emile Haris’ script introduces a glimmer of what might have been. A streamer and a caller discuss what is going on in the world the film presents: despite hundreds of thousands of victims “wandering around in a catatonic state”, the guest despairs that business continues as usual. Fast food companies have even produced novelty dishes like the “zombie zinger” to cash in on the outbreak. If the economic norms of the 21st century have adapted even to this, what would it actually take for things to change?
There is a film in that – a story worth telling. A biting, satirical use of a horror sub-genre that has become so painfully derivative over the last two decades. How far would society go, or could it go, to maintain ‘business as usual’ during a viral end of the world? And what would happen if the centre really could no longer hold? Is it really easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?
Unfortunately, this is not the film we get. Instead, the throw-away line from Haris’ script serves to underscore how painfully stale everything that came earlier in this feature-length slog was. Taking the form of a number of video conversations – the language of the pandemic – director Russ Emanuel weds his production to a format which is not only sterile and painfully unengaging, but which feels like a naked attempt to pad the film’s run-time.
The story around which everything hangs sees Matt (Gilles Stricher) and Cathy (Bailey Sorrel) trapped in lockdown on opposite sides of the world – thanks to an airborne pandemic that essentially lobotomises its victims. During what begins as a routine Zoom call, Matt bemoans the luxury ski resort he is now prevented from leaving, while Cathy clumsily tries to hide the fact she has been infected – in a way that utterly patronises the viewer into realising she is ill. The scene becomes increasingly infuriating as her apparently doting partner completely ignores all of the warning signs, and then spends what for all he knows are their last moments together whining that he is confused, and doesn’t know what’s going onnnnnnn.
Throughout the rest of the film, we will be reunited with them – as one undergoes potentially life-saving medical treatment, while the other apparently decides to swim across the Atlantic or trek across the North Pole to get home – because we are told international travel has completely ceased. As difficult as it is to spend time with either of them, again it seems like this would have been a better film to watch at least – but every time something interesting/expensive threatens to happen in their story, we depart for more convenient ‘world-building’ vignettes.
The disjointed shorts largely take place via the medium of video-calls, YouTube vlogs, podcasts and Twitch streams, where various ‘name’ actors deliver monotonous spoofs of everyday life. It is transparently clear why the bulk of the movie takes this form. It allows the production to cram in as many vaguely famous people as possible.
It is not uncommon for B-movies to have Sean Kenney from Star Trek for Kelli Maroney from Day of the Comet film a comms scene, where they don’t have to be on set. But our experiences from the lockdown era have given Staycation a plausible in-universe reason to do it. And the film milks the opportunity mercilessly.
It would perhaps have been a more forgivable tactic if any of the scenes were remotely enjoyable. However, most of the skits yield little more than a brutal tonal dissonance – with serious sequences cut slap-dash together with ‘comedy’ scenes which might less charitably be branded Boomer humour. No sooner does a punchline from an early 00s chain email fall flat, then Emanuel decides to emphasise them with a cringe-worthy musical stings – for example, when two women begin to fight during a news interview, and the journalist interjects, not to break up the scrap, but to ask them to mask up, a digitalised series of ‘losing horns’ plays.
Many of these moments deliver flailing or non-committal pastiches on the ‘wellness’ culture which became even more pervasive with the pandemic – but the directionless jokes on display are mostly at the expense of the idiot masses, buying up crassly named ‘Big D’ vitamins, while the governments which, in reality, enabled so much of this denial by routinely favouring the health of the market over the health of their citizens, gets off without so much as a mention.
But one of these skits develops into a secondary plot which, again, might have made a more compelling story if the camera was just allowed to remain with it. Housemates Britt and Marnie (Catherine LaSalle and Lilly Ivring) initially see out the pandemic on easy-mode. They can work from home in a state of undress (cuing another chorus of teeth-grating digital trombones), they can sleep in, watch movies, drink and eat whatever and whenever they like. But as things change outside – and people in the area become more desperate – they are forced to mature, and ready themselves to survive in a world where the zombie horde has been realised. Sadly, exactly when they learn those great lessons is difficult to pinpoint – as again, whenever anything interesting/expensive threatens to transpire, things take care of themselves, or we cut away hastily to something else.
Finally, we have to take a look at the zombies themselves. They are as bleak and unimaginative as possible. Shambling, moaning, grey in the face. They offer up little in the way of visible threat, and we are given very little to wonder what the world is like to them. One of the more interesting aspects of Wounded, for example, a zombie film with a much smaller cast and budget than Staycation, is that the undead communicate, and empathise with each other. But here, the film has no interest in developing its own lore, in a way that could help hint at any other subversive points around our real-life situation. Who are those most impacted by the virus? That wouldn’t happen to expose any particular divides around class or ethnicity, would it?
The jury is out on whether or not it is easier to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world. But while the long-winded Staycation crawls by, it becomes worryingly difficult to imagine a world in which we are free of it. The movie serves up a disjointed, overly-long collection of shorts, which uniquely compromise the impact of its leading themes – in a way that suggests they were as unimportant to the film’s creators as the undead archetypes they chose to tell these stories. It feels what mattered more was the opportunity to show how many Hollywood performers the director had access to, and how much smarter the writer was than the unwashed masses.