The creators of the zombie horror Kakhovka Facility also take up this fertile topic, but they add a reality that people in the 1950s would not have invented. After the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station is blown up by the Russians in 2023, it turns out that the reservoir has been hiding a Soviet secret bunker all along. In the 1950s, Professor Karlov was developing vaccines to create superhumans. However, everything went wrong, and the construction of the Kakhovka Reservoir covered up the destruction and classification of this facility. But now the Russian military has entered the bunker to recover the lost secrets of the vaccine. Accordingly, the Ukrainian special forces, led by Commander Mara, must foil the Russians' plans.
The film's screenwriter, Yaroslav Voytseshek, says that the idea for this scenario came about after the international community's sluggish reaction to the Russian terrorist attack. ‘I knew that villages were flooded during the creation of the Kakhovka reservoir. Continuing this logic, I thought that there could be not only villages, but also, for example, this object, which was quite in the spirit of the Cold War,’ the screenwriter explains.
The secret Soviet bunker at the bottom of the Kakhovka Reservoir is being filmed in the basements of the Orion Research Institute in Kyiv. In the underground corridors, where the state-owned green paint is peeling off the walls, there are still giant air filters. The basement of the research institute is really a separate bunker, where several filming locations have been set up. Director Oleksiy Taranenko gives instructions before filming a scene where a zombie is stabbed to death. The director is stern and seems slightly irritated - it's hard to believe that his debut film was the ironic drama I Work at the Cemetery.
The director's seriousness doesn't fade away during the grand opening of the shooting day. He says quite briefly that he will be filming a zombie horror and passes the baton to his colleagues. According to the producer Iryna Kostyuk, it is a Soviet tradition to break a plate before filming. Therefore, the filming of Kakhovka Facility begins with a symbolic split of the bust of Lenin, which has been previously covered with all possible curses and insults.
‘Bam! Bam! Bam!’ - Pamfir star Oleksandr Yatsentyuk in military uniform rehearses a scene with the use of weapons. Each movement is checked by the director, and the scene itself is rehearsed several times before the actor picks up a weapon loaded with blank cartridges. This is not the first time Yatsentyuk has played a military man: he previously played roles in the TV series In Her Car and in a social advert for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. ‘Here I play a surgeon who became a combat medic. In general, this is one of the first such genre films in Ukraine. The most difficult thing here is to catch this line in the lines, in some assessments and so on. I watched a lot of films on this topic to understand how to keep this line in genre cinema,’ says Yatsentyuk.
The exit from the makeshift bunker through a poorly lit staircase leads to the courtyard of the research institute. Actor Andriy Zhyla leads the journalists, explaining that the tripwires are set at the height of a person's step, so animals do not get into them. In the film, he plays the main antagonist, and so every time he passes by the ‘zombies’ scurrying around the playground, he pats them on the head and calls them ‘my grandchildren’.
‘I'll tell you that the role is terribly difficult for me personally. It's difficult because at the age of 63 I started to hate what used to be important to me - all the time I was growing up, studying and becoming a professional, and I've been in the theatre since 1983. After all, this war has shown that the Russians are now doing what the USSR used to do. They zombified us then and are trying to zombify us now,’ says Zhyla, taking a drag on his cigarette. ‘I hope that my character will make the audience disgusted with everything that happened then and is happening now, and will clarify a little bit for those who still exist in my native Mykolayiv, and not only there. When Mara (the protagonist - Ed.) asks my hero if they conducted experiments on people here, he tells her that no, only on prisoners, political prisoners, and the mentally ill. That is, he is actually a supporter of Hitler's ideas. It's a difficult role, but someone has to embody these scoundrels.’
Behind the rows of white trailer trucks is a small tent, with grimy people hanging around it. This is the home of the mass scene actors who play zombies. They take off their heavy masks, drink tea and smoke thoughtfully in front of the tent, without taking off their specific make-up and costumes.
‘I've done a lot of work as an actor in mass scenes. I mostly play homeless people. I have such a characteristic role,’ says Volodymyr, a mass scene actor. He wears a tonne of make-up and a torn Soviet gymnastics uniform. When asked whether it's harder to play a homeless person or a zombie, the actor thinks for a moment: ‘You know, it's really the same, the main thing is to follow the director's instructions. Although zombies need more make-up. Each of us (he gestures towards his fellow actors) is made up for an hour and a half every day. Otherwise, everything is as usual. We have a good team (smiles).’
Among the rows of trailers, you can also see the lead actress Maryna Koshkina. She wears a camouflage suit, a heavy dreadlocked crown and a make-up scar on her cheek.
Her character is a combat medic, Mara, who has been at the front since 2014. Her brother was killed in the war; the problem of overprotection and grief from the loss led Mara to the front. The actress notes: ‘This scar is not just a scar for my character. This is a scar that every Ukrainian has now. This is something we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. But it's about living: creating, loving, rebuilding our country. We just have to accept these scars. This is what the story of my heroine is about for me. Throughout the film, she goes through a certain path of self-discovery, self-acceptance and self-love. This is the most important thing about Mara: with her character, her scars, pains and traumas, she still continues to live.’
Producer Iryna Kostyuk is one of the creators of Film.UA's horror line, which began last year with The Witch of Konotop. Despite controversial reviews, the film performed fairly well at the Ukrainian box office. Kostyuk also has no doubts about the success of the Kakhovka Facility.
‘Horror films are very popular in the world, they generally make good money. At the same time, they can be filmed on a relatively small budget. We at Film.UA have been planning to launch horror films for a long time, but unfortunately, due to these times, we had to shoot on such a specific topic. Our The Witch of Konotop fought against the Russian occupiers, and now our Mara will fight against the Soviet legacy—both literally and in people’s minds,’ explains the producer. According to her, the line-up will include four films, and the next one will be dedicated to Nazis and vampires.
In the afternoon, the courtyard becomes less crowded. Some of the crew dives into the Orion bunkers to shoot the next scenes, while others are already resting. Slowly, the journalists who were filming stories about the beginning of the zombie horror era in Ukrainian cinema are leaving.
The film's creators promise that it will be not just a zombie horror, but a multi-layered film that will talk about the change in Soviet consciousness and much more. We will find out very soon how successful the film will be and whether it will be able to avoid the shortcomings of its predecessor, The Witch of Konotop. The film is expected to be released in autumn.
