The 'Zona' in question is a walled residential compound in Mexico, surrounded by a sea of slums, which is briefly breached by three delinquents during a power cut. Panicked violence ensues, and the residents take it upon themselves to resist police intrusion and hunt down the one surviving intruder.Pla's debut feature is a cautionary tale that at first may appear to resonate little to Europeans unaccustomed as yet to the gradual creep of US-style self-policing fortresses for the middle class. But the impulses that drive communities to seek to protect what they have hoarded, and the paranoid vigilantism that the residents degenerate into, are all too familiar from any hysterical herd reaction in our societies, whether the threat be the neighbourhood paedophile or the vague menace of terrorism.
Nihilism is always on the horizon here and Pla paints his scenario in broad brushstrokes with archetypal characters, but each stroke nevertheless feels plausible.
6/10
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