Virus X

TITLE: Virus X

RELEASE DATE: 2010

SCORE: 1 out of 4

I can't recommend in good faith that anyone watch this film. There are many problems with this film; for one, the basic plot is barely even half-cooked. A rich old lady has some sort of cure-all 'vaccine' to H1N1 but the virus never did anything scary so she hires scientists to develop a super-amped version of the virus. Of course they test these new strains on humans in poorly lit underground cells. As luck would have it, strain X turned out to be the really really nasty one.

So, of course, things happen and the virus gets out of control. But everything happens at a very slow pace, and the performances are either too melodramatic and exaggerated to be believable or too sedate and blank to be worth mentioning. Who are any of the characters involved in the virus program - including at least a half-dozen patients? I don't really know. I don't really care. There's a doctor. There's a guy who seems more like a fighter character in a video game than anyone who should be in a super-science lab. There's some alright gore but much of it is of a regrettable form in which people puke up what kind of looks like poop.

Lots of blue lighting, tilted angle shots, shakey-cam; the cinematography was uninspired to say the very least. The make-up effects were very nicely done, but that can't really carry a film. The whole thing was a wooden exercise in pointlessness. It was a story that takes maybe an hour to tell stretched out to film length and a mildly clever "twist" ending tacked on. Its not quite contemptible, but its no treat.

The Crazies

TITLE: The Crazies
RELEASE DATE: 2010
SCORE: 2.5 out of 4

This rendition of The Crazies is almost nothing like the original George Romero film. The original film was loaded not just with gore and creepiness, but also a building sense of tension and suspense throughout its entirety that really kept you engaged with the film through its use of documentary-style filming and editing. This one lacks any such substance and relies on pure shock tactics.

What you get with this Crazies is a pale imitation of an already over-the-top film that kicks it up into outrageous nonsense. A boring, dull sheriff and his highly pregnant wife gruelingly survive an outbreak of T.R.I.X.I.E (that's one more than D.I.X.I.E) in what amounts to basically the Die Hard of zombie movies. Of course, in The Crazies they aren't technically zombies, just homicidal maniacs infected with an incurable infectious disease that causes permanent insanity and brain damage.

The amount of paranoia induced by Romero's original mind-fuck masterpiece is something I doubted this remake would be able to match, but it disappointed even my very low standards. Standard boilerplate horror turn-arounds and misdirections are the stock and trade of the "suspense" of this film which is regularly ruined by ridiculous things happening to and being done by our protagonists. 

Everything in this film is cartoonish -- the bungling government is amped up into fascist stormtroopers who indiscriminately kill any and all civilians. In the original there are plenty of sane people being shot, but it is through confusion and the disintegration of support and communication lines. In this one, the military is just a bunch of coldblooded bastards committing wholesale slaughter starting Day 1 of the outbreak.

The idea of exploring the whole "how you know what sanity is, can you know that you are sane?" angle seemed to have been lost on the writers here, there are certainly no cerebral or philosophical themes present in this film; everything is played completely straight with seemingly no irony, subtlety or subtext.

In short: This is a pathetic failure. What's more unfortunate, is that this is probably the strongest effort the people involved in the making of this film are able to make -- this trashy pablum is the pinnacle of Breck Eisner's career, and I'll bet good money that the fact this film is even watchable is in spite of him and probably due to conscious efforts to block his shitty ideas.

More Quick Bites

A quick snipe at some recent films I've seen but don't have the heart to review in full...


Legion (2010): This is a movie that is fun to watch but impossible to take seriously. Not very scary either, and the whole concept of the movie is really half-baked. Still, it is thoroughly entertaining. 3 out of 4.

The Dead Outside (2008): This was a very compelling film about a small set of characters attempting to survive after a decimating viral outbreak which causes its victims to become violently insane. I liked it quite a bit but the editing and pacing just seemed to be a little bungled, and it took away from the mood of the film for me just a bit. 3.5 out of 4.


I will be reviewing the 2010 remake of The Crazies very soon!

The Thaw

TITLE: The Thaw
RELEASE DATE: 2009
SCORE: 4 out of 4

My first perfect score goes to the best horror film I've seen all year and possibly longer. It is simultaneously bleak and inspiring, its level of suspense, squick, angersome blood is intense -- those with hypertension beware. The Earth is thawing out -- and some very old things are waking up.

If you are afraid of bugs and/or disease, this movie should do a fairly good job of completely scaring the shit out of you. My hats off to the Lewis Brothers for a fine production -- rarely a forced line or moment lacking realism, and the shock and awe tactic of barraging the audience with a digital-media channel surf (complete with buffering) is clearly a homage to Romero but is done so amazingly well I had the tendency to forget it was fake.

Once the movie gets full steam ahead it never lets up, and it doesn't disappoint. From egg sacs in flesh to thousands of bugs devouring a corpse in a gigantic frenzy -- the imagery will stick with you. I dare not give to much about the plot away save those tantalizing clues. The film revolves around the concept of unforeseen consequences, in many ways. Its not just industrialization that will sting you in the ass but unprotected sex, not following lab protocol to the letter, not being paranoid enough...

Secondarily it focuses on the validity of ecoterrorism and thus on a broader scale the use of political terror in general.

And on a subtler note - perhaps the explicit theme is reinforced by the level of care put into this movie to make you squirm and scream. Is terror the only cure for nihilism? While the ending monologue cares to differ; me - I'm not so sure.

If terror it must be, then long live the guillotine!