Remember that sudden explosion of zombie media that was sparked by the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead back in 2010? While the popular opinion these days is that the oversaturation of zombie stories ended up taking all the bite out of the genre, I actually think that this period offered up a bunch of truly interesting (and often deliciously meta) takes on a familiar premise – you just had to know how to find them among the cheap cash-grabs and knock-offs.

One such gem happened to be Manel Loureiro’s Apocalypse Z, a Spanish blog about a crafty everyman protagonist attempting to survive a more realistic take on the zombie apocalypse. Over time, the blog became so popular that Loureiro ended up publishing the ensuing saga as a trilogy of novels following Francisco and his cat throughout their journey across a zombie-infected Europe.

These books were even more successful than the blog, being translated into several languages (they were a huge hit here in Brazil back in the day) and inciting rumors of an inevitable big screen adaptation. Of course, it would be quite a while before fans could see this story brought to life in another medium, with the official Apocalypse Z movie only releasing in late 2024.

Thankfully, despite a handful of narrative flaws and a general sense of overfamiliarity (we’ve seen many similar zombie stories since the days of Loureiro’s blog), I’m happy to report that Prime Video’s long-awaited adaptation is a genuinely entertaining re-imagining of a classic recipe.

Directed by Carles Torrens and produced by Nostromo Pictures, Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End tells the story of Manel (Francisco Ortiz), a Galician lawyer who lives in seclusion after the death of his wife, with his only companion being his miraculously well-behaved cat, Lúculo. Unbeknownst to Manel, a mysterious viral outbreak is making its way across Europe, eventually leading the Spanish government to evacuate the population, including Manel’s sister and her family, to the Canary Islands. Refusing to take part in the evacuation effort, Manel is left to fend for himself in a city populated by the infected – all of whom have now turned into a horde of undead cannibals.

You’ve seen variations of this setup countless times before, but I really appreciate how Apocalypse Z refuses to skip over the slow-burning turmoil surrounding the initial days of the epidemic. From the inadequate government response to the quarantines and public panics (including supermarket shortages and traffic pileups), you can tell that the filmmakers borrowed directly from our collective experience living through a real-world pandemic. In fact, it’s these quieter moments of reflection amid a catastrophic event – like Manel crafting a makeshift security camera for his home and watching YouTube tutorials about how to defend yourself from zombies – that make the film stand out from its peers.

I actually think that the movie loses something special when Manel finally decides to search for his sister in the Canary Islands, as the flick turns into something more akin to a conventional zombie thriller than the grounded character study of the first half. Thankfully, things don’t get as over-the-top as something like World War Z, but I was thoroughly enjoying watching Manel having to scrounge for food and create a new apocalyptic routine.

Of course, when the story finally expands into a larger world, the scope clearly isn’t as grand as the script would like us to think, with a limited budget (at least when compared to American productions) meaning that quite a few corners had to be cut when showing us the effects of the zombie plague. While I still think that a low-stakes story about a single person trying to make it out alive of a bad situation is much more compelling than following an action hero shoot his way through countless zombies, I’d also appreciate a more detailed (and hopefully gorier) look at the physical devastation that the virus left behind.

When it comes to psychological devastation, however, Ortiz does one hell of a great job of making Manel into a relatable and refreshingly resourceful protagonist. Despite most of his interactions being either with a cat or a phone screen, you really get the sense that this journey is pushing him to the very edge without the need to turn him into a badass zombie slayer.

It’s unfortunate that the same can’t be said for the film’s secondary characters, with most of them fulfilling placeholder roles as sympathetic survivors in need of rescuing or inexplicably evil raiders. While I get that zombie flicks have always made a point of showing us how the real threat comes in the form of desperate humans, Apocalypse Z’s inclusion of generic militarized antagonists feels like it was ripped straight from the worst episodes of The Walking Dead. In all fairness, this was also a problem in the books, but at least there Loureiro had the time to flesh the villains out.

And speaking of the source material, the serialized nature of the original story means that viewers shouldn’t expect a definitive ending to Manel’s journey despite the flick technically containing a clear beginning, middle and end. A sequel hasn’t yet been confirmed, but I’m excited to see if Prime Video will continue adapting this influential trilogy. I’m also grateful that they didn’t turn Loureiro’s work into yet another bloated streaming show, so I’ll happily tune into more grounded zombie terror if the filmmakers can keep up the same level of quality – though hopefully with more money involved.

Apocalypse Z doesn’t reinvent any wheels or even make any form of commentary about the zombie genre itself, but it’s still a surprisingly well-performed rendition of a classic song-and-dance. While the second half of the experience may be a little shaky and I wish the flick had the budget for larger zombie hordes, I can’t help but appreciate how everything here feels lovingly hand-crafted, which is why I’d recommend it to fans of classic zombie media.

Personally, I thought the worst part of the experience was slowly realizing that my own cat would never accept being shoved into a bag in order to accompany me on my own post-apocalyptic adventures.

Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End is available now on Prime Video.