After tormenting the entire human race in Rakka and exploring an unusual concept like science fiction in Vietnam through Firebase, Neill Blomkamp is ready to melt brains once more with Zygote. A remote base in the Arctic Circle, two survivors, and an abomination roaming its corridors generate a solid combination of action, tension and horror, with none other than Dakota Fanning in the lead role.
Throwing a crew in the middle of nowhere and forcing them to face an indescribable horror is fertile territory for any science fiction project. With that said, Neill Blomkamp couldn't stay on the sidelines. His “experiment” Oats Studios remains firm, and both Rakka and Firebase already add up to more than four million views on YouTube. The material available via Steam has even higher quality, and we at least recommend you explore it. His third short carries the name Zygote, but unlike his previous works, it doesn't invest too much time in the introduction. A mining station in the Arctic Circle, two desperate survivors... and something that follows them:
If the first thing that comes to mind is a mix between The Thing and Alien (or why not its sequel Aliens), you're not alone. In fact, Blomkamp acknowledges the influence of The Thing. The monster that chases Dakota Fanning’s character (a synthetic being designed as a replaceable element in case of an accident) and her superior officer adopts a “local design”... and by that I mean the dead of the base. In an attempt to expand this small universe, Blomkamp explains that in the future, a huge number of asteroids fall on Earth, and multiple companies rush to extract their metals. In the case of Cerberus Minerals (whose logo appears several times in the short), its miners discover a light that escapes from an asteroid, and it induces them to “build” a substrate of fused flesh.
How did Dakota Fanning get to Zygote? Blomkamp had the opportunity to work with her in another short for BMW, The Escape, where we also see the great Clive Owen. Blomkamp sent Fanning the script, and the rest is history. Oats Studios has one more short to share, Lima, but there is no release date yet. We'll be waiting.
