This is one of the first times I went in to a movie without getting what I expected, and coming out of it satisfied. “The Park” is not a movie that necessarily breaks the mold, but it works within its simplistic and small budget and cast to create something of substance. While most dystopian movies opt for “Apocalypse Porn,” Director-Writer Shal Ngo opts instead to use the end of the world as an allegory for growing up.
After an incurable virus kills all of the world’s adults, all that is left behind are prepubescent children. Tasked with doing their best to survive before the virus takes them too, they battle for dwindling resources. But things change when survivor Ines discovers a settler at an abandoned amusement park.
“The Park” is set primarily within the belly of an abandoned amusement park and most of it acts as a metaphor for the loss of innocence. The environment is painted with old carnival rides, and tainted stuff animals, and central character Kuan seeks to restore it to its glory. She’s a child who had to grow up before she even reached puberty and her quest to revive the park becomes a means of giving her some sense of wholesomeness before the inevitable. The grim specter of the virus hangs over everyone’s heads as main character Ines tries to make some sense of Kuan and her motivations. We get a sense of the characters primarily through flashbacks as Ngo reveals the characters before and after they were forced to become virtual savages in this wasteland.
Without adults around there is no real order, and Ines begins to wonder if Kuan’s idealistic attitude is in vain. There’s a huge sense of trying to re-claim one’s childhood in the midst of this horrendous wasteland, and much of what occurs between Ines, and Kuan revolves a pretty violent prologue. Director Ngo doesn’t shy away from the horrors humans are capable of in times of desperation. There is stark violence and vicious murders, but there’s also the great interplay between Ines trying to conjure up some memory of what she was before the plague. Her friend and cohort Bui is desperate to re-claim her since he relies a lot on her.
But that becomes more and more difficult as Ines finds solace in small tasks that remind her of her childhood. Director-Writr Ngo manages to work well with his small cast, all of whom offer spirited and enthusiastic performances. Carmina Garay is particularly good as the innovative Kuan, a prodigy who is anxious to rebuild the world, despite the clock ticking on her adolescence. “The Park” is a very good, and refreshing bit of post-apocalyptic genre fare. It’s a meaningful and subtle exploration in to the loss of childhood innocence and humanity.
Now Available on U.S. VOD.