Quarantine L.A.

My team watched this over Zoom one day, and I've gotta tell you, I was ready to un-mute myself and just start going full MST3K on it! It is just that absurd! The only way it could be watchable is if the folks at Rifftrax did commentary on it.

Omg, where to start. A military "leader" with no military characteristics at all. A military subordinate who salutes with his left hand: really? A military "hero" who's supposedly a dad, who has no human empathy. Zombies that are smart enough to hide, and close doors behind themselves. People in a life and death situation, walking right past abandoned cars, and dead people, without ever checking for supplies, or I don't know, gas for your offroad vehicle you're just going to walk away from. Come on people, use some common sense when writing this trash, and maybe it won't come across as trash.

When people talk about the "good old days" of film they are referring to one of two periods in film history. The first is the classic era of black and white where lighting and shadows were the draw. The second is the time period of the 1960's- late 1970's when movies had you use your imagination to decode what the camera didn't show you, allowing you to draw your own conclusions to what was happening (Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre). What Infected brings to the table is along the lines of the second period of film. We are told little of the infection and are open to draw the conclusion on whether it was truly man made or a natural event from that was harnessed for mass scale testing.

In today's market where the "zombie" genre has been so diluted by over marketing and goreification (Walking Dead, George Romero remakes) that most films of the genre almost forget to focus on the people and the personal aspects of the survivors. What Infection does is almost make the virus an afterthought to bring the perspective of the survivors to the forefront. The survivors do fall into the stereotype roles, soldier, child, medic, shady stranger, fool, but the writing does the roles justice. Each character is written for their role wonderfully and the writing does not stray from these types. In the homeopathic era of the 'monster' film it is always good to see that people remember what the genre should be and are still willing to take risks to keep it as fresh as possible.

If I had to give a comparison to other movies I would have to say it falls into the area of the Steven King TV movies where a lot of what was going on was done through imagination and dialogue.

This is a solid 3.5 spectacular! That's it actually worked on my computer the whole time. This short sited attempt at a good zombie movie fell short because there's nothing here to watch. Generic setups back stories and flashbacks.

IMDb says the estimated budget for this film was $1.2 million.... whattt??? And more importantly- WHY??

I guess the budget was spent on decent cinematography? But the script was weak, the characters were generic cliches, and the acting was pretty dang bad. I mean - I've seen worse. But that doesn't make this good by any means.

The worst character was a very small Asian woman who was supposed to be a powerful player in charge of military decisions and with an evil side. While I commend powerful roles for women - please hire a woman who can play the part. I wouldn't believe this woman is capable of being head librarian, let alone in charge of the military. Also, she was visibly reading her lines off cue cards, so yeah...

The lead alpha male type guy was also a total flop. Cliche generic character, poor acting, just generally lame. Nothing interesting about him, zero charisma, not attractive. Annoying/idiotic alpha male cliche behavior.

I sometimes really enjoy low budget zombie and sci-fi films. And I'm usually pretty generous with my ratings, but this one was such a dud. There was nothing that made it interesting at all. A bunch of non-actors repeating lines without any sense of them being real characters.

Also, some ridiculous choices in the plot were a total joke. At one point, the characters are inside of a big sturdy building that is surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. They declare that this place is too unsafe to spend the night and they must go a mile further to a safer spot. They lazily trudge along as the sun sets without any sense of purpose or urgency and finally decide to sleep outside in a parking lot slash junkyard??? That was the safer spot?? Ummm okkk. Just plain stupid.

If there was at least something mildly entertaining, interesting, funny, or original here I would give a better score, but there just wasn't. I'm giving 2 stars only because I've seen worse.