How is the world affected by a catastrophic event? Everyday people live through a government mandated quarantine during a global pandemic while desperate scientists race to find a cure before it’s too late.
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Review by Parker Jesse Chase:
Staycation is not your typical fast-paced, blood-splattered zombie flick. Instead, it roots itself in a world we’ve all just come out of — one marked by a global pandemic, isolation, media saturation, and the ever present tension between hope and paranoia. This film doesn’t imagine a future dystopia; it reflects the one we’ve already survived, making its slow-burn horror hit all the more deeply.
We’re first introduced to a seemingly ordinary Zoom call between a couple — familiar, casual, and deceptively mundane, but the tone shifts quickly. Before the story even begins to unfold, we receive a chilling message from the woman on the call: she’s been selected for experimental testing in a race towards a cure. Right before our eyes, and her boyfriend’s, she turns. It’s subtle, heartbreaking, and terrifying.
From there, the film pivots. The narrative reveals its true central characters — two young women navigating this strange, evolving world. Our supposed final girl receives an invitation to return home to her family, but the film resists this path, instead exploring the way society itself has morphed to accommodate this new strain of infection. In this version of reality, infected individuals can remain in their homes with the proper licenses and regulations — essentially treated as pets or human vegetables. The satire here is razor-sharp, filtering this absurd premise through news broadcasts, government permits, and media sensationalism.
Staycation leans into the social commentary with vignettes mirroring the pandemic experience: endless work Zoom calls, awkward online dating, political divides, and the growing influence of livestreams and podcasts. These glimpses build a complex emotional landscape reflecting the waves we all felt during lockdown, from eerie calm to deep fear, connection to collapse. Russ Emanuel directs with a careful eye toward satire, layering in commentary on political extremism, conspiracy theories, and the terrifying normalcy of a world falling apart in a sort of slow motion. As humanity inches toward a cure, suspicion and chaos swell. The film explores the idea the virus may have been released intentionally, a man made tool of control. This suspicion bleeds into interpersonal relationships and fuels a growing storm of rage and desperation.
Staycation imagines a new world order, not one born from explosive zombie warfare, but through the slow, creeping collapse of what we once considered to be normal. The horror lies in our familiarity with it. The tension isn’t in the transformation from human to zombie, but in watching the slow unraveling of trust, stability, and oneself.
It’s unsettling, darkly funny, and honest in ways most apocalyptic horror films aren’t.
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