Zero Day

“There are no reasons and you're all gonna look for em but you're not gonna find em! So fuck you, fuck that, fuck the reasons, there are none!” as good as always, but i would actually sell a kidney to see this for the first time again. granted, i wouldn't be 15. but whatever. i feel like for my fav movie, this deserves a better review than 'haha twink actor funny the fandom is a bunch of gaybos’, but the words always escape me. i could say that the acting and the script is raw and real, that the relationship between cal and andre is in itself subject to another one of these rants altogether. i could say that it's an exemplary found footage for a budget so low, that this movies technique is purposeful and impactful, that the contrast between the direct, casual, first hand look at the shooters and the cold-hearted objectivity of the implication of compiled, third-party found footage leaves the audience with more of an engaging, insightful take than others of this subject matter (especially elephant and polytech. im not ashamed is the prime example, but that movie is low hanging fruit to begin with) that try so hard to understand. i am personally not a diehard for the post-dogme view of reality as inherently above messaging, neither is coccio. the movie is subtle without artistically circlejerking subtlety itself. but i think the way this movie goes outside of its scope as a school shooter movie exploration of violence is most commendable. it raises an interesting question about the purpose of narrative in people’s lives (both in this context, and at large) without ever breaching reductionist territory. it sticks because it doesn’t allow you to draw conclusions without wading through all its layers of futility and artifice. first and foremost, this is a movie about failed sublimation. even in what is essentially the final unacceptable act, cal and andre find ways to make it a project. these kids cannot (will not?) channel their pain or anger into anything productive, but they can document it. they can make a performance of it. they can construct a reflection of themselves because the world never gave them one resonant enough. the shooters dont have a direct, defining motivator (ahh a kid at school bullied me a while ago), and that is part of their motivation itself. they can’t claim victimhood without feeling lost for words, they can’t be content in the lives they currently live. so they try to become some vague, impossible ideal that will teach some abstract lesson to those around them. this is, i feel, the closest we can get to an answer regarding the school shooter psyche question. why are copycat shooters so common? why are all of them so obsessed with manifestos, videos, and crafting their “legacy”? the violent video games and the exaggerated for shock value extremist ideologies aren’t causes, they’re symptomatic of misguided quests for projecting an image larger than yourself. cal and andre control the camera, they decide what we see, they document themselves as both subject and author. it’s their narrative. and here, they are putting their all into an elaborate, calculated cry into the void that will only echo post-mortem. the audience feels complicit, because it is to them that they are ultimately crying out. good art doesn’t give you answers. it makes you question. zero day doesn’t explain violence; it just shows you how it exists, how it’s planned, performed, and consumed. compared to other films on the topic, it is by far the most level headed, the least hypocritical in its criticism of sensationalised crime.