Parents' Guide to The Elixir

In many ways, this film is frustrating, but mainly because of what it could have been. So much about the production, execution, and vision of The Elixir is great, despite its main flaw. The problem is simply that this particular flaw happens to be a cardinal sin of zombie movies: characters don't behave realistically. So many times this movie shows characters simply not behaving as any normal person would if put in that situation. For example, characters simply stand around and stop running away from zombies (who are still coming after them), in order to explain something to some new character or to just stand there for a reaction shot, looking terrified.

In reality, in all of these situations, most people would have already long been gone. For instance, when a human is clearly turning into a zombie, immediately get out. Instead, throughout the entire film, characters (even after having seen this already happen to many others) watch it happen and only start running away when the zombie then lunges forward toward them, and many characters still don't run and instead simply get eaten. Why this is all so frustrating is that almost everything else about the film is quite solid. The performances, the production values, the violence, the action and set pieces, and even the emotional personal journeys a few of the characters experience are all well done. If only the realism (or lack thereof) was tended to more, well, realistically.