M: Beyond The Wasteland

Few genres are as exhausted or over-familiar as the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ (the superhero genre is an obvious exception, but that goes without saying). From George A. Romero’s seminal 1968 Night of the Living Dead to the revival of the game-changing 28 Days Later franchise with 2025’s 28 Years Later, the zombie movie is as relentless as the raging monsters unleashed on audiences time and time again.

Macedonian director Vardan Tozija's M: Beyond the Wasteland (or simply M) essentially blends together the tropes of the zombie film with elements from John Krasinski's A Quiet Place. Young Marko (Matej Sivakov) and surivalist father (Sasko Kocev) have been left seemingly alone in a world now ridden with deadly virus and mutant monsters. Of course, they’re not alone. Marko finds sanctuary with Miko (Aleksandar Nichovski) another youngster surviving in the wilderness. Similarly, Miko is accompanied by a single parent (his mother played by Kamka Tocinovski). Dissimiarly, Miko is not cut out for post-apocalyptic survival. He has Down's Syndrome and Marko soon becomes a surrogate parent figure for him as they traverse through a feral landscape in the search for safety.

Special praise goes to Sivakov. Carrying an apocalyptic zombie-horror at a very young age is no mean feat. Nichovski's performance is equally accompolished. 28 Weeks Later of course featured dual child protagonists battling through a universe of the undead, so the concept itself is not new. The difference here is that Tozija chooses to tell his story more directly through the eyes of a child with Marko understanding the world around him as a storybook journey through darkness to hope at the other end.

The clichés are inevitably there. The zombification of the parent. The caged zombie(s) kept in containment. The sinister resistance movement whose questionable actions and motives paint them as the ‘real’ monsters. However, Tozija and co-writer Darijan Pejovski bring some refreshing touches to an over-familar genre. Blood, gore and tiresome jump scares are ruled out. Instead, Tozija employs striking restraint to tell his story. Ineed, the film’s true moment of horror is not a gruesome scare and comes at a moment (and from a source) least expected.

In fact, Tozija foregrounds hope over horror and the piece concludes on an unexpectedly uplifting note. It is this approach of telling an over-saturated story through a juvenille perspective with a more restrained hand and optimistic grasp that makes M a worthy addition to the genre and a notable notch in Tozija's body of work.

M: Beyond the Wasteland is on digital 10 November 2025 from GrimmVision.