‘Why is everyone so complicated?’
Is Ben Wheatley good? It’s becoming an impossible question to answer. Kill List is definitely good. I think Sightseers is good. I wasn’t that into A Field in England but I see why others liked it. From what I understand Meg 2: The Trench is categorically not good and nor is his presumably unnecessary remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. After sitting through six episodes of Generation Z, I’m still not sure if he’s any good or not…
Generation Z takes elements from Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later in this satirical tale that sees the elderly residents of the fictional town of Dambury turn into bloodthirsty zombies who are keen on eating the young. While the premise might suggest a younger man tutting at the elderly for Brexit, to its credit, Generation Z is actually a lot more balanced and nuanced than all that. An ensemble cast featuring Sue Johnston, Robert Lindsay, Lewis Gribben and Viola Prettejohn (as well as Wheatley favourite Michael Smiley) try to make sense of a show that is pleasingly anarchic but not always coherent.
In many ways, Generation Z is Wheatley in microcosm. Parts of it are genuinely terrifying (the zombie makeup is particularly gruesome and original). Parts of it are genuinely funny. Parts of it are genuinely clever. But then large swathes of it don’t work at all. It’s tonally all over the place, the characters are either lived in and nuanced or drawn with broad strokes and it often feels like we are watching characters from a bunch of wildly different shows being forced to interact with each other. Sometimes, this strange approach works, and at its best Generation Z brings a fresh take to the zombie subgenre whilst also having something to say, but there are other moments that feel self-indulgent and groan-inducing.
Generation Z at least proves that Wheatley is not just settling for the studio dime. This is the work of an auteur and in that respect, this is the most Ben Wheatley project of all. And yet, the British director remains a puzzle to me. I better keep watching.
