Confessions of a zombie
THE ZOMBIES of Breakout, the county’s first escape-room game, usually do a great job of scaring you out of focus.
But Wednesday may have been unusual.
The zombie league at Trinoma that day was composed of three mainstays accustomed to deadliness and gore—and me, the Inquirer employee.
While commuting to the venue, I thought this was going to be a walk in the park.
I have never entered horror houses or had the bravery to watch a horror movie without closing my eyes, but I had training.
I played a possessed character for a Dulaang UP Baguio play. The next year, at least for practice, I would substitute for the central role in “Ang Pinakamakisig sa mga Nalunod sa Buong Daigdig”—a handsome dead manwashed ashore (the characters say that the man has skin as white as milk, so it was not for me).
Playing the possessed and the lifeless prepared me for this role, I thought.
I’d already internalized my role. The walk I’d practiced in front of the mirror for days was supposed to be this: I would drag my left leg, because I suffered a fracture during my endless walk.
Hardest project
That was misplaced confidence. Like a sign of things to come, the makeup artist Aileen Duque, whose credits include “Anak ng Dilim” (the movie starring Gladys Reyes, which weirdly scared me to death as a child), found it difficult to apply the makeup on me.
I just sweat too much, so the rubberlatex prosthetics wouldn’t stick, the makeup wouldn’t stay on.
She did her best, and the product came out excellent, but not without confessing that I was one of her hardest projects (the list of which includes Maricel Soriano).
When the game opened at 2 p.m., the sweat was slowly washing away all the fake blood, the gray foundation, even the rubber latex.
That would not stop until my last set—I had three, all 20 minutes, plus a five-minute bonus.
After 75 minutes inside the escape room, I almost wiped all the makeup off as I removed the sweat.
While everyone still mourns the death of (spoiler deleted) in the recent “The Walking Dead” episode, I moved on to a more personal pain—being the ugliest zombie.
It was not just because of the makeup disaster.
You’d think it would not really matter, because the zombies are all essentially ugly half-alive cannibals, but the ones I was sharing the task with made me think the role is just gravely unappreciated.
It takes commitment to play these ugly creatures, whose death is a question not of if, but of when—if zombies “die,” that is—and when to be in a few frames if it were a TV series.
A talented zombie (and Runtertainment employee, I discovered), Mej Mejia, did all the frightening roles in the first two sets—breaking into the room, running after the people to distract them from their ultimate goal of escape.
I was mostly walking in circles, doing death stares a few times. I was merely following his lead when I chased after the challengers.
Growl
Growling is painful, I learned as the only zombie in the room in my third and last set. For chatterboxes like me, to growl in reply to questions from the “prisoners” is torture, as much as it is torture for them to figure out where to start and then to move on. “Kuya, anong susunod?” “Kuya, paano ba bubuksan ’tong Cornetto?” “Kuya, tulungan mo kami!” I could only growl in reply.
Timing is everything, not only in comedy. The more experienced zombies know when to reveal themselves, to bite off your head. My attempt at it failed.
While the others expertly frightened people without snapping out of character, I would do an about-face to giggle for my little successes. (I hope the people did not notice.)
“Huwag kayong mataranta! Tao lang yan!” a mother shouted as I scared her little boys, and they tripped over the electric fan and the TV almost fell over.
It is a bad thought, but the zombies at Breakout make you sympathize with the zombies on “The Walking Dead.” (When will the zombies get depth, like the creature on “I Am Legend,” or maybe a person immune to the plague or isn’t quite zombie, as in “Warm Bodies”?)
The zombies deserve applause, maybe even the same prayer we said for the characters they killed. They were people once, too, you know.
These dead men walking are extras without names but, as a line I keep quoting goes, extras make movies extra good.
That’s what the zombies did for the people that tried to make it out of the “Walking Dead” rooms.
Not that I did not get good reviews—three teens whowere miserable during their turn said their thanks after a patintero with me (I replied with a smile; bad move); six-footers from one session wouldn’t dare come to me, which was sad for the girl they went in with because she had to do it; a kid came up to me to say I scared him. (I did, because he screamed in falsetto; but the older brother commented, “Mas magaling ’yung isa.”)
Some episodes of “The Walking Dead” begin with an easy kill, that zombie that’s doomed as soon as he appears. Overall, I was that on Wednesday.
I would gladly take the role in appreciation of the good zombies—and also because the makeup challenge will make me a real nightmare.