Phase 7 (2010)

Overrated

good back-story, and good acting

As Good As It Gets

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

COMMENTS: Coco (Daniel Hendler) and Pipi (Jazmin Stuart) are a naive, happy couple who do normal kinds of things, like go to the grocery on Saturday morning. This Saturday morning is different however. On their way back, people begin swarming the streets in a panic. An epidemic has broken out and if the media is to believed, it's becoming worse by the minute. Monitoring the situation from home, Coco and Pipi's evening is interrupted by floodlights and loudspeakers. Their building's been quarantined and the emergency respondents are cordoning it off under a huge plastic tent, as if the tenants are termites to be exterminated. They find themselves sealed into their own apartment complex, forbidden to leave. They can only watch from their windows as the outside world turns to bedlam around them.Bedlam is not confined to the outside for long. Inside, resources dwindle, utilities are cut off, and fellow residents get cabin fever and panic. Coco does his best to keep his head, protect Pipi, and hold down the fort.It's not easy. It turns out that doomsday scenarios aren't necessarily like fast-paced action movies. Caught in the doldrums, Coco and Pipi are stuck waiting, waiting, waiting... Instead of excitement and contingency, the experience for the group of tenants is more about nagging spouses, running out of lightbulbs and toiletries, and putting up with annoying neighbors, i.e. each other -for awhile that is.As the situation outside increases in severity, tension mounts. Pipi unwittingly works against Coco by innocently leaking critical personal information about their situation to an untrustworthy neighbor. Tenants fraction into factions. Coco must decide whether to go along with the prevailing group or stay out of it. The situation inside the complex degenerates further when under the auspices of moving a possibly infected neighbor off their floor, it becomes clear that the do-good members of the "apartment association" cell are out for their own gain. One thing leads to another and they attempt to force their way in on a fellow resident to loot his provisions.The bodies begin to pile up. Residents are dying, but is it from a hemorrhagic plague, or are they being murdered? Sadly, Coco's best option seems to be to join forces with his paranoid but gregarious, survivalist upstairs friend Horacio (Yayo Guridi). He's a nice guy, but maybe insane. Horacio's apartment turns out to be a high-tech, reinforced bunker complete with an armory of automatic weapons, electronic surveillance equipment, maps, and stacks of classified government information. Horacio wants Coco to join forces with him, and offers him a CBR protective suit and a firearm. Then he invites Coco on patrol with him through the darkened stairwells and corridors of their massive apartment building. The neighbors are up to some monkey business of their own and these nightly sojourns through the edifice's labyrinthine passages turn out to be enlightening in an upsetting and disturbing kind of way. Maybe Horacio isn't so paranoid after all. He seems to know an awful lot about what's going on, more than anyone else. But can Coco trust him? Blackly comic but subtly so, Phase 7 combines suspense, grim social commentary, and unsettling insight into human nature in a thriller format which is interrupted by moments of horror. Artfully shot and well paced, Phase 7 makes dramatically good use of camera angles and framing. Lighting is alternately glaring and sterile, and gloomily claustrophobic. This emphasizes the film's thematic contrast; the delineation between the bright, logical, outside world of society, authority and officialdom, versus the insular, isolated, inner world of sanctuary and retreat. Yet as the film goes on, we begin to detect a double meaning; authority is questionable. Society is reasonable strictly on its surface, and only so long as everything is going well. Safe refuge, once cut off from the outside world, can quickly degenerate into an insular den of suspicion, irrational fear, and schizophrenia.It's the cinematography that accomplishes this. Our sickening epiphany arrives not just from Phase 7's dialogue and action, but from a dual interpretation made possible by the very lighting and camera work itself. Ultimately, Phase 7 is about masquerade; how things -people and situations -can turn out to be something very different from their daily representations.In Phase 7, Coco discovers that he can't trust anyone or anything other than his own judgment and instincts, but the trouble comes from not knowing for sure whether his personal interpretations are sound. Under the circumstances, with little reliable input to go on, and multiple variables and potential explanations for what's happening, every course of action is a gamble. Coco must do his best to make the right choices to deliver himself and Pipi from myriad dangers which mount behind every turn of their complex's twisting stairwells, foreboding cavernous parking garage, and eerily dimmed corridors.

This exciting, low-budget Argentine film by Nicolas Goldbart revolves a young couple, Coco (Daniel Hendler) and Pipi (Jazmin Stuart) living in a small, high middle class apartment complex in present-day Buenos Aires City. Suddenly, the whole edifice where they live is under quarantine due to a strange high-mortality epidemic that affects the lungs of its victims. Thus, Coco and Pipi find themselves prisoners of their own apartment. The same goes for their colorful neighbors. All residents, the local sanitary authorities declare, must remain in their apartments until the quarantine is over. None knows how long would that be. Soon food supplies start to run short. Internet is down; so is television. Things take a turn for the worse and the disease becomes a global pandemic. Authorities everywhere –we learn-- are overwhelmed in a matter of days or perhaps weeks. As millions of thousands of people begin to die worldwide, a state of complete chaos and anarchy follows. A maximum stage alert (Phase 6) is declared by the World Health Organization. Yet things get even worse. The apartment complex mirrors society as a whole as the desperate and paranoid neighbors start making alliances and turning on each other with deadly intentions . . .

The production of this movie was great. For the exception of one very unrealistic firefight scene, if you watch the movie you should know the one i'm talking about without me spoiling it. Now the effects, and actors were great, but it's time for the bad. The writing in this movie was just the worst of the works. The worst thing is that throughout the whole movie the wife is acting like a total b!tch towards her husband as if he's coming in late from bars every night. I don't exactly know if it was written for her to act this way, or if it was the actor herself that made it seem this way. Either way it bothered me throughout the entire movie. The second bad writing part is of the husband. With just half the sh!t he sees in the movie a real person would have spoken the truth to the women they were married to, but not this guy he doesn't share anything with her until he has to. Again even after he does share her attitude still seems that of a wife whose husband keeps coming in late at night from bars. So the whole thing about this is that the husband and wife seem not to care about the epidemic even after people start dieing. Which is just the worst writing for a family of two about to have a child. Everyone knows that any right minded pregnant women would be taking every precaution to keep her child safe, but in this movie the family seemed to be as worried about getting the virus as dead people are of getting fat. It makes as much sense as the sentence I wrote just before this one. 5/10 stars and it only did that good because the production was actually well done.

You know, in the last few years, it seems the foreign cinema is out to show Hollywood what it's all about. There have been great French horror films in the last two years (Prey and La Horde come to mind) and now there is Phase 7 (Fase 7) from Argentina.The movie centers around the lead character Coco and his wife, who are expecting a child. We learn that the wife is 7 months along. The story opens with them stocking up on groceries like they always do and bickering a little. They see a huge rush of people come in and furiously start shopping but don't really think anything of it.When they return to their condominium building and begin sorting groceries, they receive a call during dinner that one family member is to go to the lobby. Coco goes down and is informed that the building is in quarantine and the Ministry of Health will have people come and check on them.Coco and his paranoid maniac friend Horacio band together as the residents of the quarantined building begin to turn on each other for food and because they think someone is infected.Coco is a slacker. An oaf, who is decidedly pacifist, and is content to let his pregnant wife change lightbulbs. When Horacio arms him and gives him a bio-suit, he is clumsy and twice gets knocked silly by wall-mounted concussion grenades.The violence gets bloody at the end with a surprise twist. I won't give this one away, so you'll have to watch the film. I saw it with English subtitles that were pretty spot-on, but it was nice to be able to practice my Spanish a bit as well.All-in-all, this movie should be destined to be nominated (and maybe win!) an award or two, and is one of the better foreign films I've seen this year. Hats off to everyone involved. You had my attention for the whole movie and I actually enjoyed it! Thank you!