Parvulos will haunt your dreams: Fantasia Festival review

Parvulos is the new Mexican horror film from writer/director Isaac Ezban that made its way to Fantasia Film Festival

This is writer/director Isaac Ezban’s follow-up to the greatly received Mexican witch horror, Evil Eye

Parvulos follows three brothers who have adapted to a new way of life after a virus has wiped out most of humanity. They live in a cabin in the woods and spend their days scavenging and hunting for whatever animals or scraps of food they can salvage.

But they kids have also adapted to something else, something way more dangerous than any animal. They keep two infected in the basement of their house… and those two infected need feeding.

Parvulos is a coming of age drama about loss, grievance, losing your innocence and to e come an adult when you’re still a child. It carries all the same traits as a zombie film but it is played out a little different. To be honest, it is minimal but definitely packs more of an emotional punch than others in the sub-genre. This is a brilliant approach from Ezban, focusing on human side of the apocalypse and despeate measures and lengths we will go to for love.

We have seen this premise a good few times in zombie productions but again, this one hits different. The kids love their folks, it don’t matter if they’re chained, cannibalistic infected – they’re are still mum and dad. As the kids struggle to find food for the infected they hatch a plan to start hunting something a lot larger than rats, dogs and frogs – human survivors.

Within the first couple of minutes, Ezban takes the viewer to a very uncomfortable place: a dog is killed with a crossbow for food. It was one of those moments when I thought they would change their mind at the last second, but nope. Dog was dead in a second. Why couldn’t they just kill a boar or some other forest rummaging animal? Oh, I know why…for maximum effect and to give us a taste of what’s to come. If these guys are killing pooches in the first few minutes of the film then you’ll know things are gonna get messy.

Ezban shows us just exactly what can be done with a limited budget. Rather than leaning into the horror genre, Ezban finds the innocence of humanity in the apocalypse.

My only complaint would be I wanted more backstory of where the madness all began. Maybe I missed it but I never caught (get it?) how this virus was spread in the first place and how fast society succumbed to this delay new disease.

A special shout-out to the young fantastic cast who all gave astonishing performances. I hope to see them grow in the industry and I can’t wait to see what cinematic madness writer/director Isaac Ezban conjures up next. I will be waiting.

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