WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
It’s very hard to come up with a happy ending in a zombie movie, which is probably why The Elixir doesn’t even try. This, I’d argue, is a good thing. There’s nothing positive about all of your loved ones getting eaten alive, is there? And Kimo Stamboel’s Netflix movie, which combines a lean zombie horror with a dysfunctional family drama, wants to play by those bleak rules. Almost everyone dies. The precious few who survive only spare themselves a few moments to venture out into a ruined wider world, a grace note that reminds us even making it out of this movie isn’t necessarily a reprieve.
There’s little to explain, because The Elixir is the kind of movie where the lack of explanation is in itself the point. It’s the usual zombie format stripped right down to its essentials. Zombies are unambiguous antagonists; they don’t need rationalising. They don’t need justifying. So many movies and shows make the mistake of believing that the zombies are the selling point of zombie media, when really, they’re just a catalyst for everything else these stories are about. People. Family. Survival. And so on, and so forth.
Zombies, Just Because
We learn early on that the cause of the zombie outbreak in The Elixir is the titular tonic, a Haily Mary play by Wani Waras Herbal to create a designer product. It’s an eternal youth serum that looks — I suspect intentionally — like a green juice. And it works, albeit temporarily. Sure, you’ll lose your wrinkles and grey hairs, but you’ll then lose the rest of your skin and your mind. One infection leads to a wide-scale outbreak in record time.
Putting aside the irony of people being killed by an elixir intended to make them look younger and more alive, it’s clearly deliberate that this is the only explanation we get. There’s nothing about the specific chemical formula of the elixir. We don’t get any scenes characterising the Big Pharma company that Wani Waras was merging with. There just needs to be a thing that makes zombies happen — nothing more, nothing less.
And the zombies aren’t original either. They eat people. Infection spreads through bites in the usual manner. They can run, which is rarer but still not new, and only destroying the brain kills them. In an interesting detail, though, rain seems to transfix them. This is ultimately unexplained and is mostly just utilized to liven up a couple of set-pieces.
Everyone Dies
Okay, almost everyone. But you know what I mean.
Because The Elixir is playing by the classic rules, virtually everyone gets killed off throughout the movie, and only two characters make it to the ending. The meat of the drama is in how everyone loses their lives; the little heroic sacrifices they make, and the reconciliations that are achieved along the way.
Most of the deaths aren’t noteworthy. But Rudi’s is quite important, since he gets infected protecting his son, Han, but then continues to reappear in his zombie form throughout the rest of the movie. There’s something particularly horrifying about a small kid’s own father trying to eat him. I was also surprised that Rahman and Ningsih both bite it in the police station, since Ningsih had a whiff of the final girl about her, but those kinds of subversions are appreciated. And at least they got to die together.
There’s also Bang’s meaningful self-sacrifice, remaining behind to blow up the police station so that Nes and Karina can escape with Han. It’s a particularly resonant outcome for him, since he was characterised almost exclusively as a useless layabout.
Reconciliation
Nes and Karina’s frenemy arc is pretty essential to The Elixir, and this is the most dramatic thread in the movie’s ending. After escaping the police station, Nes reveals that she has been bitten. Since she can’t survive, she has to trust Karina to take Han elsewhere and protect him. Thankfully, she has been doing that the whole movie, so Nes at least knows he’s in good hands.
Nes leads the zombies away with a firework so that Han and Karina can escape, and then she takes her own life. There’s a frankness in how this is shot that is very effective. It’s the self-sacrifice that means the most, since it’s a mother sacrificing herself for her son, not to mention a woman who has historically coasted through life, taking the ultimate responsibility. Her arc, like Bang’s, is simplistic, but it works.
This isn’t a happy ending, though. As Han and Karina ride away, the camera pans out to show a landscape full of smoke and explosions, confirming that the infection has spread way beyond this tiny village and into Indonesia proper. Wherever they end up going, it probably won’t be for long.