The Horror Show
Dawn of The Planet of The Apes
by Matt Reeves
While a “Planet of The Apes” film is traditionally considered sci-fi and not horror, I decided to do a review on the latest film anyway. Why? Well, for several reasons. One of them being that hellooo? It’s Planet of The Apes!! And another being that yes, it’s a sci-fi film, but a sci-fi thriller at that, with some seriously under appreciated horror elements strewn about.
Dawn of The Planet of The Apes picks up a decade after where Rise of The Planet of The Apes left us off. For those of you that don’t know: Back in the first film, our main character Will was working on the drug called ALZ-112 which was to be a “cure” for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The drug then went on to become ALZ-113 and experiments went horribly wrong when an ape named Koba freaked out during the testing and released the virus into the lab, infecting one of the scientists. We soon find out that while the drug makes the apes smarter, it has horrific side effects on humans…and evolved into a virus.
In the second film, the ALZ-113 virus reached global pandemic status and has killed off the majority of earth’s population. While the human race has destroyed itself over the last ten years with violence in the face of the virus, Caesar and his fellow apes have flourished in the wild, building a community in the forests. They can all speak sign language now, with several of the apes now communicating verbally. They have a school to teach the young apes how to communicate and have truly established an ape society.
A small cluster of humans in the San Francisco area have come together and created an apocalyptic society of their own, with plans to use the nearby dam to restore power to their colony. On a trip to the dam, one of their colony members, Carver (Kirk Acevedo) runs into two young apes and shoots one out of fear. The apes go wild and aim to attack the group of humans that include Malcolm (Jason Clarke), his son Alex (Kodi Smit-McPhee), his girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russel) and some others but Caesar shows up and commands the apes to stand down. Malcom apologizes and Caesar tells them to go, the humans are chased out of the woods by the apes. A day later, the apes show up at the entrance to the colony with a warning to Malcom and his people, “Do not ever come back.”
Malcolm refuses to heed Caesar’s warning and feels that he can negotiate with the evolved animals and reason with them. Without further discussing the plot for fear that I’d be giving away major plot points and spoiling the story, let’s just say that Caesar clearly is evolved, remembering where he came from and that if it wasn’t for human interaction, he wouldn’t be who he was today. But some of the others apes…not so much.
The movie clearly has several underlying themes and intricate storylines are woven throughout. We are shown the terrible consequences that come from harboring hatred and although one might be able to “evolve” in some ways, the anger that one keeps holding onto will set them back immensely. The viral catastrophe that ended the world is in itself a truly dire storyline. While not such a prevalent piece of the first film, the thing that was to “help” the human race ended up destroying it and the test subjects, aka the apes, were the ones who benefited from it in the end, not the humans. Human error: hatred, anger, ignorance, and the lust for power are what ultimately destroy us. What the apes seem to think is that they are so different from the humans, but with evolving behaviors and brains, they learn that they are not so different after all. With the capability of having cognizance, these animals are no longer ignorant to emotions and are aware of the “why” and “how” behind things. As they learn more of the why’s and the how’s they too begin to develop the same traits of the humans, embodying the “human errors” as well.
The horror in this film is evident on so many levels that it can be often overlooked because of the “talking animal” distractions. But just like the original films, the movies totally creep me out. Imagine a virus-ravaged human society, clutching on to what little remains of our old world and all the while we are being replaced at the top of the food chain. Humans are inevitably doomed to be the “animals” in this new world as we are still too attached to our comforts and even after 10 years, still heavily reliant on the technologies created by man.
This film was executed extremely well. There a few bits that were dragged out and could have been cut, however, after all was said and done, every bit of the film was obviously in there for a reason. (Oh and Gary Oldman is in it, and he’s always awesome.) I don’t know a true sci-fi fan, or horror fan for that matter, that wouldn’t enjoy Dawn of The Planet of The Apes. The power struggles, the morality struggles, the post-apocalyptic society that emerges…the murderous lines that get crossed when war becomes not just a thing of the human race.
I look forward to seeing what the next installment in the series has to offer.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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