Strain 100

I happened to stumble upon the 2020 horror movie "Strain 100" by random chance here late in 2022, and seeing that it was a zombie movie, of course I had to watch it. I am a big fan of all things zombie, but unfortunately the movie genre with zombies is flooded by subpar movies. So I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations to this movie.

Writers Hassan Hussein and Todd Klick managed to put together a very generic script, as "Strain 100" was essentially every zombie cliché rolled into one movie. Yeah, there were so many generic zombie tropes throughout the movie that you quickly grow tired of watching it. So "Strain 100" wasn't a particularly great foray into the zombie genre.

The acting performances in "Strain 100" were amateurish. I have to be honest here, because they were rigid, wooden and amateurish, so you're not in for a grand cinematic experience of fine thespian performances. But hey, I bet the actors and actresses had fun doing this. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Strain 100", and that counts for something, as that is something I do enjoy when watching movies.

Now, with "Strain 100" being a zombie movie, then we all know that good special effects is a must for movies in this genre. And director Hassan Hussein's movie did not have good special effect, not even remotely. I will say that the effects were special, that's for sure. Especially the blood spray effects, those were so horrible to look at that you can't stop laughing. It puts even 1990s computer graphics to shame.

"Strain 100" came and went without much of a groan, much less leaving a bitemark. If you, like me, enjoy zombie movies, your time, money and effort is wasted, should you opt to sit down and watch "Strain 100".

My rating of "Strain 100" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

Its definitely no Dawn of the dead or World war Z. Weak dialogue, deplorable acting with some actors coupled with extremely poor special effects makes it an average watch.

When you watch a zombie movie, the priority should be blood, gore and tense edge-of-your-seat chasing scenes.

Unfortunately, this movie fails to hit on multiple levels. (CGI blood and blood that looks like water mixed with dark red ink is a definite no-no.)

That being said, lower your expectations and its good for a one time watch for the lovers of the zombie genre since there are other really terrible zombie movies out there.

It's a low budget zombie film made during a pandemic. I would say it's a straight to TV movie but it's also adult R/18 rated so unlikely to gain a prime time slot.

If you like the dawn of the dead movie or the walking dead you will likely find this reasonably entertaining otherwise it's not good but not comically terrible either.

Production quality inconsistency is where this one falls apart. Some of the Make-Up and Effects work is good, a lot of it is very bad. Same goes with the location sound, first scene in the diner is all over the place, as is the audio in the Caprice, where the window is wide open and there's no atmos track for the air rushing past. Shots within the same scene have widely different exposure and grade, and as for the script, there's dialog in the car scenes that adds nothing to the plot, just an excuse for the writers personal diatribe. A bigger budget wouldn't save this one, but a good production designer and 1AD could have turned it in to a good low budget or Indie monster flick.

This movie is one of the worst directed, worst written, and worst acted zombie movies I have seen in awhile. Just skip it and find anything else. The ending, if u can even call it that, makes no sense, basically the movie just stops. Stop making movies with your kids pocket money. I just don't get what was the whole point, it just sucks so hard that I can't believe this has been done intentionally - surely something went horribly wrong somewhere, there has to be some excuse for the lack of any intelligence.