CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

thisseatofmars If you choose between seeing this and Life (2017)... choose this instead.Let me explain why. George Miller, master storyteller and director of the Mad Max films, has said that audiences have learned how to "speed read" films, citing the number of cuts between the earlier Mad Max movies and the latest, Fury Road: Wikipedia claims that Fury Road contains 2,700 cuts while The Road Warrior had only 1,200. I bring this up because Zygote offers us the very same setup as films like Alien, Aliens, John Carpenter's The Thing, Event Horizon, and even Life, of this year: Zygote is set in a derelict and remote station featuring workers being stalked by a horrible creature. Zygote is superior to Life only because it is much more condensed. I'm judging Zygote by Life because they came out the same year and Life has failed to evolve.No, I'm not giving preference to Zygote over Life just because Zygote is shorter-- Zygote is condensed. As the Mad Max movies have evolved to suit the abilities of "speed reading" audiences, Zygote offers us everything Alien, Life, and The Thing offers without dragging out the entire show. The "trapped in space with a horrible monster" genre has been done to death. Zygote wisely gives us all of the feelings of isolation, fear, claustrophobia, and wonder that the genre offers us in just over 20 minutes. "Life" was overlong rehash of a film we've seen more than a dozen times now. Perhaps Zygote-- or rather, its format-- is the evolution of the genre. A criticism: the opening exposition is weak, just the male lead talking and explaining the setup. And he speaks in such a gravelly-growly "please take me seriously, I'm a hardened veteran, no really" kind of way I wished there was an option for subtitles.In any case, props to the FX department of Zygote-- they did a wonder creating their monster. Now THERE is a scary creature I'd rate in the same category of creepy-cool as Alien's xenomorph. Not Life's "Calvin..." that thing looked like a lizard with a four feelers.

Theo Robertson Neill Blomkamp ? Hey I remember him . He shocked the cinematic world with his exciting sci-fi thriller DISTRICT 9 that combined action with biting satire. He then directed a couple of flops which means Blomkamp is now known as "Hey I remember him .He directed DISTRICT 9 all these years ago" With ZYGOTE one wonders if Blomkamp is trying to put himself in the shop window as in "Look I can make an effective hard hitting sci-fi horror movie" and indeed he can. The monster itself is derivative visually owing elements to John W Campbell's WHO GOES THERE and the works of Clive Barker but as far as imagery goes it's a superbly designed monster that is guaranteed to make your flesh creep!!!!! SUGGESTIVE SPOILER !!!! The fundamental problem with ZYGOTE is that it is not self contained in anyway . Imagine you're watching the most compelling DOCTOR WHO story ever made with the scariest monster in the Universe when all of a sudden there's a power cut. That's how the story is structured. It starts off sudden and ends even more suddenly. You'll be frustrated and you're left with the cynical feeling the director is asking for funds to film another 70 minutes of screen time . If Blomkamp gets his wish does this mean everyone who has commentated on this site get cheap tickets for the feature length ZYGOTE ?

nlasser There is nothing innovative or new about this short apart from one image. The idea and execution seem more tired than anything else, and i got the feeling of a few excited kids getting their hands on a lot of high-tech gear and funds and not really knowing what to do with it - which is kind of a shame. So there's a lot of effort here, but at the end this was more boring than anything else.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Zygote" is a Canadian English-language short film just released the other day, so this 2017 film is really new and fresh. The writer and director is South African Oscar nominee Neill Blomkamp, which explains its instant popularity I guess. I must say I really really loved his breakthrough movie "District 9", but this one we got here does not do that much for me and sadly overall I am not too much in favor of his Oats Studios works recently. The first was maybe still the best. Anyway, this one runs for 22 minutes and 22 seconds and stars Jose Pablo Cantillo and (the probably more known) Dakota Fanning. As always with Blomkamp, you could describe it as creature horror, but here the one component that makes his films usually so strong is missing: I am of course talking about the national component. For example District 9 would not have worked outside of South Africa because of the high quantity of references about race, racism and more. Maybe that's the reason why I did not end up liking these slightly over 20 minutes. Or maybe it is that I am in general not a great SciFi fan. I see this is receiving pretty good ratings, so maybe if you like the genres SciFi and horror, then you can check this one out. Not even the claustrophobic component that I usually appreciate in films did a whole lot for me. Same goes for the ending, which felt abrupt and not really good in a way where you could discuss it after the movie. The acting is okay, it's not an actors' film at all I guess, more about the effects and maybe the story, so you can't blame Cantillo or Fanning for the mediocre outcome, even if this film does not change my opinion that the younger Fanning is the more talented. All in all, I am disappointed. I hope Blomkamp can return to his best with his full feature works in the future again. His more recent stuff (also outside of Oats Studios) left me underwhelmed.