Fantastic Film Fest 2023 Review - Zillion
Images courtesy of Fantastic Film Festival.
Zillion tells the story of the exhilarating rise and fall of visionary entrepreneur Frank Verstraeten, the man responsible for creating and owning – for a time – Belgium’s most chaotically electric nightclub. One cannot help but draw immediate comparisons between Zillion and similar stories that centre the ‘rags to riches, to rags again’ narrative arc, such as The Wolf of Wall Street and Scarface. That is to say of course, that the perennial mainstays of such films are indeed present in Zillion also; drugs, shady deals, raucous sex, and a dogged authority figure on the tails of it all. However, this is not to say that Zillion is utterly formulaic. Whilst we have indeed seen this type of film before, Zillion sets itself apart with its breakneck pacing, bizarre connections to the lurid world of pornography, and of course by setting the eye of this storm inside Zillion, the whirlpool of laser light shows, cage dancers, pyrotechnics and of course, 90’s techno music.
Our protagonist, the ever-scheming Frank Verstaeten, could be described as being entirely driven by his rather gnarly Napoleon Complex. From the film’s opening line, Frank’s insecurity is made immediately clear; “It’s easy to hide you’re stupid. You can’t see it in someone’s face…But if you’re short like me, there is no hiding it”. As such, this in a sense becomes the entire driving force behind the insane journey Frank is about to embark on, because as he puts it “I had to make sure people couldn’t look past me”. This intense hubris is what leads Frank to build his mega-nightclub Zillion in the first place, as a kind of millionaire’s revenge at being unable to enter the hottest club at the time, Carré . After being rejected from Carré, Frank is inspired to build his own nightclub that will rival any club in the country, and also to serve as an excellent site to put his illicit money towards, gained from shady tech deals with China. Along the way, Frank teams up with Dennis Black Magic AKA the porn king of Belgium to make sure the glitterati and ‘who’s who’ of Belgium are all in attendance at Zillion’s opening night. It is here that Frank meets Vanessa, the most recent Miss Belgium winner and therefore “officially” Belgium’s prettiest girl. To allay his own personal feelings of inadequacy, Frank of course, must have Vanessa on his arm.
Frank finds success seemingly overnight, as thousands upon thousands flock to Zillion every weekend, dancing to thumping beats and keeping the neighbouring area awake until all hours of the night from the crazed debauchery that a club such as Zillion inspires in others. The moment Frank seems to have it all, as we know, is the moment he begins to lose it all, and we must watch this wily character avoid the grips of the Belgian IRS, time and time again, until he inevitably gets caught, and once again returns to his former ‘nobody’ self. Whether you love Frank or you hate him, Zillion cannot help but draw you in, alluring you with its tantalising blend of fact and fiction, leaving you to sort out for yourself what really happened and what did not. At the very least, it will leave you with an intense longing to listen to some 90’s trance and techno anthems, to honour this outrageously ambitious man, who pulled off, for a brief moment, one of the best acts of revenge of all time.
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Zillion is screening at the 2023 Fantastic Film Festival Australia, running 14th to 30th April. Check out the festival website for tickets and more info here.