Muertos y vivientes
2011 · 18m · España
Directed by Iñaki San Román
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, horror
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
The dead rise from their tombs and the whole city runs home for protection, except one smiling lady who takes her car and drives to the cemetery.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The zombie apocalypse setup gets a lobotomy—everyone panics except one woman grinning her way into the graveyard like it's a Tuesday errand. San Román yanks the genre's throat sideways and makes you laugh at the wrongness of it.
A lean 18 minutes that understands its debt to absurdist cinema while executing formal control over tone; the restraint in performance and editing keeps the dark comedy from tipping into noise, anchoring the surreal premise in deliberate craft.
The whole film pivots on that smile—one actress's choice to play the protagonist as blithely content while the city melts into panic around her transforms what could've been a gimmick into something genuinely unsettling and singular.