Infection

The whole "J-horror" phenomenon may be winding down. I have not seen a clever or original entry in the sub-genre in some time. It seems they are becoming as bland as Hollywood even though most fans are still eating it up because they are in search of something different and smart. It also seems Taka Ichise produces every single one of these films so they can put some blurb about The Ring and The Grudge on the DVD box. It's getting old with me. Ringu and Ju-on were great horror films, but you can only beat a dead horse for so long. Infection (the first entry in the J-Horror Theater series) is definitely beating a dead horse. Nothing new is offered here regardless of all the potential the film had. Creepy empty hospital, weird patients, gooey green slime, and they blow it. It's just not scary, it doesn't deliver the goods like its predecessors. In fact, it's all very boring. I never once felt anything for the characters and nearly fell asleep multiple times. The situation was getting intense when they were searching for the host of the virus, but that doesn't last. In fact, there was no host at all it seems. The ending is about what I expected and I found it to be completely stupid. Some people are going to say that I missed the point, but I understood the film for the most part. It's just that I don't care. I've seen much better Asian efforts, such as The Eye and A Tale of Two Sisters, and the standards those films set are high. Infection just doesn't raise the bar.

This movie scared the living!%^*@ out of me! I watched it in daylight, but I was too scared to get up for a snack! The pacing can be a bit long, but if you have patience, it works.The use of lighting and wicked sets reminded me of Dario Argento's Suspiria, though lacking his flair for geometric patterns. The atmosphere is handily Lovecraftian with its sense of doom and inescapable dread. It was 117 outside, and I was stone-cold scared! This one has a place of honor on my shelf, right next to "Spiral", The Ring series, and my collection of Italian Splatter movies! I will be showing this at my Halloween party, along with some others to scare and sicken everyone.

Like many horror fans, I've been watching a lot of Asian films recently. Although Asian horror isn't new, easy availability of it in the United States is relatively recent. Unlike many horror fans, though, I'm not generally of the opinion that Asian horror is better on the whole than American horror. That's not to say I think American horror is usually better, either. I just think the two are different.

The odd thing is that even understanding that difference, a lot of reviews for Infection are complaining that the film is a bit "confusing", "disjointed", or more charitably, "non-linear". That's to be expected from a viewer who hasn't seen a lot of Asian horror yet. But oddly, those comments are often coming from viewers who seem to love the genre. It's odd, because the genre is characterized by being more non-linear. Compared to the typical U.S. horror film, Asian horror has many of the same differences that European horror from the late 1960s and early 1970s had--it tends to be more surreal and poetic. Rather than a focus on transparent literalism, there is a focus on metaphor, symbolism and dream logic. For anyone familiar with academic philosophy, the difference is reflected there. U.S. horror is equivalent to analytic philosophy, European horror to continental, and Asian horror seems rooted in Zen, Taoism, and so on.

Thus, when you begin watching a film like Infection, you have to expect something different than what you'd expect from, say, Cursed (2004) or Valentine (2001). Although in many ways, Infection is more straightforward and spends more time providing explanations than the typical Asian genre film. It's nowhere near as inscrutable as Charisma (aka Karisuma, 1999) or Chaos (aka Kaosu, 1999), but it's not as transparent as Dark Water (aka Honogurai mizu no soko kara, 2002). Rather, it fits nicely in the middle of the two extremes.

The story is set in a small Japanese hospital. Right from the start, we see that they're having odd problems and things are beginning to get out of control. The hospital is understaffed and quite a few employees do not seem to be as competent as they should be. Meanwhile, we see an ambulance that keeps announcing that it has a patient with a possibly dangerous infection who needs to be seen immediately. We're not sure who they're broadcasting this to. After a while, it becomes clear that they're broadcasting it to no on in particular. Eventually, The ambulance drops off its patient despite protests from a doctor about not being able to handle the case. The patient has a bizarre, possibly fatal infection, and it seems to be spreading.

Although infection makes a fair amount of sense on a literal level, much of the film is meant as an extended, in-depth metaphor for infections, and not just literal biological infections. Director/co-writer Masayuki Ochiai and co-writer Ryoichi Kimizuka stress a phenomenon that's more like meme theory--they're looking at how ideas, or any kind of information or state, starts with a seed that's passed on and evolves/transforms over "generations". Since this is a horror film, a lot of the focus is on how that can go sour.

At the same time, the film works just as well on another level--an unabashed series of cringe-worthy horror set pieces. All of these layers co-exist happily, and most viewers can choose to engage (or not) with the film on any or all of Infection's modes. Like most artworks, you get out of Infection whatever you put into it. That means that this isn't really for passive viewing.

Just as would happen in an infection, or under the various infection-like phenomena that are being symbolized, Ochiai gives us a gradual transformation in style, structure and content. The opening scenes are normally lit, the hospital is well populated with relatively normal folks, and the patients' problems seem only slightly odd. At the very beginning, the film could just as well turn into something of a hospital "soap opera". But imperceptibly from moment to moment (it's only perceptible when you take a step back for a "broad" view), the lighting and color schemes change, first becoming a bit darker, then emphasizing pinks, reds, yellows and finally greens and blues--a color transformation not unlike a minor inflammation leading to bruising, sickness and strong nausea, and finally death.

At the same time, our cast of characters--both medical professionals and patients--gradually dwindles until we're left with only a small core or normality. Infection becomes increasingly claustrophobic, and Ochiai makes a similar transformation in his physical threats--from "hard", external problems, to a gradual getting under the skin, to complete bodily dissolution. At the same time, a ghostly presence becomes more prominent. These kinds of infectious progressions imbue every aspect of the film and are quite ingenious.

But wait--there's more! Ochiai has also given us a mind-bending "rubber reality" film. He makes a philosophical point about color perception early on that ends up being correlated with the changing color schemes on a completely different level, rooted in the mental. This aspect comes as something of a twist near the end, and imply a recontextualization of the whole to that point, although the point may just be the role of the mental in "infections". But just so we don't forget the ultimate aim, Ochiai gives us a small horror set piece tag at the very end that exists only for its own sake.

My love of this film might also have personal roots--just about the only things that disturb me in reality are medical in nature--doctors, hospitals, treatments, sickness, etc., so films like this hit close to my phobias. At any rate, for me, this is one of the best Asian horror films of recent years, right up there with Ebola Syndrome (aka Yibola bing du, 1996), Battle Royale (Batoru rowaiaru, 2000) and Suicide Club (Jisatsu saakuru, 2002). Don't miss it, but go in with the right frame of mind. And bring penicillin.

I was hoping for a little more out of this movie. It is set in a hospital, which is an inherently creepy setting that has been used to good effect in several good horror movies (eg, Session 9, the Eye 2). Unfortunately, though the cinematography is good, there's not much in this movie that rises above the sort of low-level creepiness inherent in all hospitals.

At times I was struck with the idea that the director had originally planned to make a fairly straight-forward hospital-slasher movie, but due to some kind of colossal blunder ended up being shipped 50 gallons of green goo instead of the 50 gallons of fake blood that he ordered. Infection was then swiftly rewritten to accommodate this mix-up, and while they were at it they tacked on some twists at the end which might have been fresh prior to the global movie-twist mania that swept the world circa 1993 or so.

It's not a terrible movie, and there is some endearing acting by the three lead doctors (who do fairly well with pretty colorless characters). Overall, though, it plays out like a Halloween episode of E.R. Many scenes that ought to frighten the viewer are just drawn out, only the most extreme of the gross-out scenes are really effective, and the movie is full of dross that doesn't enhance its story or its mood.

I like how much work Japanese directors put into the pacing, atmospherics, and suspense of their horror films. This one is no exception. If you ever saw Kingdom Hospital and enjoyed it for the mix of suggestive spooky supernatural undertones clashing with rationalism and materialism thematically, then you might like this film as well. At first I thought this film would turn out to be something like 28 Days with ferocious infected zombies feeding on humans, but there is a much more clever plot line going on which I won't reveal. The plot seemed to have some holes in it til I realized what was really going on in the end. Mainly though, I enjoyed the mix of film with a suggestion of a supernatural influence in a materialist or rationalist world. Visual storytelling gets this idea across with images of, for example, swings swinging on their own near the hospital, or an old crazy lady who sees her dead relatives in mirrors staring at her reflection in a window looking like an apparition. I must say that after discovering Japanese thrillers and horror films, it is hard to go back to Hollywood offerings for sure. They seem so predictable, tame, and cookie-cutter in comparison.