Femme Filmmakers Festival Review: R3D@CTED (Georgia Wood)

R3D@CTED is a short horror film directed by Georgia Wood. It premiered on Halloween of last year at the Liverpool Arts Bar. Marketed under the simple tagline: “A young girl’s life turns upside down when faced with the zombie apocalypse.”

I love this film’s intro. If it took up the entire short, I would have been a bit obsessed. So creepy. I think it perfectly mastered the components of what makes things, especially short-form horror, terrifying. The entire narration is in a radio-presenter voice from the early 1900s, and it overlaps old footage of animal experiments. 

I think this section is ‘scary’ because there is never any solid acknowledgement that these trials caused the apocalypse. The narration is distinctly neutral. The narrator is simply making statements about the methodology used in the experiments. And these experiments are also not overtly grotesque; they concern the reanimation of body parts of a dog after death. I loved the atmosphere of this creepy found footage section.

—Is what I wrote before realising this is in fact the infamous ‘1940s Soviet Reanimation Footage’ from the Internet Archive and that I am possibly an idiot. More on this to be discovered. 

The footage is in debate for its historical context. Many believe it to be dramatised Soviet propoganda—given the fact it literally plays out like most vintage horror films. Despite this, there is internet-wide confirmation that these were representations of legitimate experiments by Dr. Sergei Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy in the U.S.S.R. 

Anyway. The Film uses this experiment as a ‘what if’ scenario for the reanimation of humans. Enter the zombie apocalypse. 

The main character Tess (Charlotte Taylor) and her boyfriend Rick (Bill Jevons) are talking about their plans to move. They are delightfully scouse. During their discussion about the move, the main character suddenly realises it is mother’s day and embarks on an anxiety fuelled walk to deliver her mother (Parissa Zamanpour) flowers.

Her mother is ‘not well’ and does not like her boyfriend. She then, on the walk, receives a call from Rick. He tells her to check the news, but as she is mid-walk, she cannot. She is told to get home ASAP. Once home, Tess’ mother comes home drunk and the two have an argument. It then becomes apparent that her mother has been bitten whilst they argue about the passing of Tess’ father. Tess packs up a bow and arrow and unwraps a note from her dad saying that it’s a gift that will become useful in her future. 

This is an ambitious short film and I think it makes really great use of its budget. The walk from the graveyard to Tess’ house is just rural enough to where we have no evidence that civilisation is still intact. It’s also, despite its ambitious concept, tightly focused enough to execute this dystopia without giving way to its budget shortcomings.

Thematically I was a little intrigued that perhaps this zombification was allegorical: ex. The mother is drunk when she and Tess argue, and the film also implies that she is neglectful and spiteful. On her way home, Tess also encounters a zombie described as a ‘drunk’ who ‘mugs’ her. The familial ties drama and emotional tension lead me to believe there was something to read into but it is most likely just character-building. Like I thought maybe that the zombies were some kind of metaphor for antisocial or harmful behaviour—no clue how I got there. I was clearly in a funny mood.

I could poke and prod at this thing for its technical issues but I love that the project seemed really fun to make and that a lot of passion was put into it. I don’t think many of these issues are its fault and are just symptomatic. This is a really fun and charming film.

I would also like to warmly thank this short for giving me the idea to become the sole researcher behind that found 1940s footage.