“Sometimes a subject just chooses you and it’s impossible to look away. When that happens, you just have to approach the subject honestly and hope others can find value in it.” Filmmaker Ben Coccio gave this explanation for choosing the subject of high school shootings for his first feature film, a fictionalized account of two teenagers who plan and carry out a deadly attack on their fellow students.
The film “Zero Day” was shot in a mockumentary style, as if an editor had assembled home movies of the shooters’ video diary. We are introduced to Andre (Andre Keuck) and Cal (Calvin Robertson), two likeable teenagers who, for unexplained reasons, decide to go on a murderous rampage followed by their own suicide at their high school on the first day the temperature hits freezing. Their video diary is an attempt to provide others with an explanation of what they did (though not necessarily why), an invitation to selected media to cover the event, an alibi for their families who knew nothing of their plans. and a chance to gain notoriety.
“The narrative conceit is that it was always the two kids doing the filming, except at the end, when the school’s security cameras and another camera come on the scene,” Coccio said during an interview at the Florida Film Festival. “It goes from the two characters controlling the narrative to the very end, where the narrative continues beyond their control.”
As you can imagine, Coccio had trouble finding a high school that would agree to let him film there because of the content of the movie. Instead, he used a local university library for the final interiors and a local high school exterior for the exteriors for his $45,000 production in New Milford, CT.
The two stars, high school students Andre and Cal, actually knew each other before they even auditioned for the roles, so they had a natural camaraderie, according to Coccio. Their real names are used for their characters in the film, and the actors are supported by their real families representing their fictional families. Also, although all but two of the scenes were scripted, the actors were allowed to use their own words as long as they kept the spirit of the original lines. These elements, along with the home video look and feel, combine to make “Zero Day” feel startlingly real.
The film received many awards, including the Grand Jury Award at the Atlanta Film Festival, Best Feature at the New Haven Film Festival, Best Feature at the Empire State Film Festival, and Best Narrative Feature. at the Florida Film Festival. “Zero Day,” which is now available on DVD, was also an official selection at the Raindance Film Festival, Deep Ellum Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, and Boston Film Festival.
“My goal was to showcase the dramatic and suspenseful qualities of these two characters as we watch them go ahead with their plans,” Coccio said. “It’s a suspenseful, almost Hitchcockian case story, told without judgment or explanation. It’s about a shockingly random, horrifying situation in which most of the people involved are good people. These two guys are the anomalies” .