‘To look young’ has plagued humankind like a curse for centuries now. With the giant skincare companies promising to almost ‘erase’ time, the fetish with anti-ageing has now become a destructive delusion. We now deny accepting the inevitability of decay. In our quest to conquer wrinkles and grey hair, we’ve obscured the line between preservation and delirium. The mirror no longer reflects who we are; it reflects who we wish we could remain. And in that endless yearning, something vital begins to rot: our sanity, our humility, and our understanding of what it means to live.
Kimo Stamboel’s The Elixir captures this delusion in the most grotesque way possible. The film takes the familiar zombie trope and roots it in the desperate human desire to stay young forever. Sadimin, a CEO dazed by vanity and greed, pushes an anti-ageing potion that ironically accelerates pre-mature death instead of reversing it. The elixir, meant to conserve life, becomes the agent of its devastation. Through its disarray, the film tries to conquer a truth our culture constantly avoids: immortality is not a blessing, it’s a curse disguised as progress.
Beneath the blood and screams, The Elixir warns that our obsession with youth is deeply spiritual. It erases empathy, break families, and blinds us to love, as seen through the film’s trap of strained relationships. When the dead rise, you see them as the embodiment of our obstination surrounding to look young forever.
What I could infer is that The Elixir doesn’t merely show a zombie outbreak. It mirrors our psychological collapse, a world where the fear of ageing has finally consumed us whole. The horror, as Stamboel reminds us, is our desperate denial of death.
