Infection

I have never in my life taken the time to write a review on anything. But PLEASE do not waste a penny or a second in this movie. There is nothing redeeming about it at all. The script is terrible, the acting atrocious, the plot absurd, the sound effects ridiculous and the storyline completely boring. It is sad that one red cent was made making this disgrace to the movie industry. I only have it 1 star because there wasn't a way to give it negative stars. I guess they thought they were creating something inventive or imaginative but my six year old niece tells better stories.

Everyone involved in this film should be banned from ever making another movie.

Director Albert Pyun does not inspire confidence. His name evokes groans and memories of cheap and often pretentious genre films. But when I heard that his latest project was a single uninterrupted shot I was as intrigued as anyone to see the results. The fact that Infection (retitled Invasion when it DVD) was getting praise from critics only served to heighten my interest.

The film's novelty is that it is a science fiction film told from the fixed view of a high definition camera mounted on a police car. With a cast of mostly unknowns and an aura of mystery, Infection inspired a similar level of intrigue as the much higher profile Cloverfield (2008). If only the results were as exciting. Whether the consequence of budgetary limitations or a misguided artistic aspiration, Infection is a huge disappointment.

Shoddy-looking news footage and title cards set the scene as the film begins with a Police officer driving down the dirt roads of a national park. He meets a local resident acting very strangely. Once again something alien has come to small town USA, but while the soundtrack provides plot information the visual element is an endless steam of footage of bland dirt roads.

Pyun is both a prolific hack and a talentless artist and has been consistently disappointing viewers for nearly 30 years. One can theorise that this event-free narrative experiment and its largely meaningless visuals are intended to isolate viewers. To hypnotise or unsettle an audience used to seeing everything. If that was the artistic intent that's fair enough but it simply doesn't work. While I respect that using a single traveling camera to encounter various characters is a complex undertaking I can't help but feel that he could have done more.

Set within an urban location and with a larger cast this could have been, like Cloverfield, an extraordinary film. As it is it's just a bore. The fact that over-the-top sound design, a smattering of dubious visual effects and an admittedly interesting score seek to shatter the faux-realism of the found footage merely adds to the overwhelming sense of disappointment.

...but that by no means makes it good or even mediocre. This doesn't rise to "complete crap" status. And that's the fascinating part: it's such a non-movie that you keep watching and waiting for something to happen so the movie can get started. But it never does. It actively avoids everything...period. I can't stress enough that isn't an exaggeration, this lack-of-a-movie avoids it's own characters and plot, even just abandoning them completely by the side of the road and goes for a long, slow drive through the countryside. Yes, that literally happens, it's actually a pretty succinct summary of the entire 70 or minute runtime.

The most interesting thing about the whole thing comes from the fact that it was made at all: who thought this was a good enough idea to make a movie? Who heard the pitch and invested real, actual money to make it happen? How can an absolute absence of story and characters and events be anything but boring? Was this just another attempt to scam the foreign video market with a fake movie made for $20 and a tank of gas?

If nothing else, "Invasion" raises a lot of questions. "Can't there be an IMDb rating BELOW 1?", for example.

That's right. You heard me.

Almost everything important in this movie happens off-camera. The problem with these "real-life" style horror flicks is that the presence of the camera has to be explained. The only way the makers of 'Infection' could think of to get a "real" camera into their movie was to use the dashboard camera of a police car. The problems with this choice should have been immediately apparent--the middle of a car's dashboard can't follow a principal character around. A police car can't bob and weave through buildings, can't hide in bushes, can't investigate strange sounds in an abandoned warehouse or flee to the roof and fail miserably at trying to escape via helicopter, can't do about 80% of the "required" activity in a successful zombies-are-coming-to-eat-you flick. It's just too limited. Even COPS doesn't rely ONLY on dashboard cameras. Why the makers of 'Infection' thought they could do it is beyond me. You're so desensitized to everything by the time hand-held cameras finally DO come into play toward the end, it doesn't even have an effect.

The "skipping" footage doesn't help matters. For the feed to cut out just when what IS visible starts to get good doesn't make it extra scary, it just makes it frustrating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of "less is more." Best thing about 'Paranormal Activity?' The power of suggestion. But the power of suggestion ALONE is not enough to carry a good horror film.

Even with an "A for effort," I can only justify giving this flop three stars. Recommended only for those who can't handle the real scares in something like '*REC' or 'Paranormal Activity.'

This film screened at the Velvet Jones Night Club in Santa Barbara in 2005 and I still can't forget it. I have never experienced anything like this before. I don't know how Pyun pulled off such a personally harrowing experience. I felt like it was happening to me. I can only figure it must be the one-shot aspect that grabs hold, but that doesn't really capture what happens. I felt excruciating tension during this film and stayed locked into my seat after the end. You'd think I'd be talking about the story, what happened and how good the acting was, but it wasn't like a movie with actors. It was like being completely immersed within real life-threatening events. I've read some people say it's like Blair Witch, but that wasn't as all consuming and personal as "Infection". This felt like an experience I was having, not a movie and not even an event I was watching. "Infection" is a 'must see' for every movie lover and every gamer - it's a cross between the two...only better.