Infection

Wow. I almost passed on this because its imdb score was 4.0 (which is absolutely insane). This is a minimum 7, might even be an 8 if they cut out the cringey opening slides & added maybe 20-30 minutes of action/climax (it's only 1 hour long, so it definitely had a VERY SOLID base to build from).

It's the best dashcam movie I've ever seen. Based on its imdb score, I thought it would be a B movie I could put on in the background while I did other things; boy was I WRONG! It's short but absolutely grippingly intense with menacing scenery and frantic dialogue throughout. The constrained view of the dashcam really emphasizes your sense of vulnerability. You really become emotionally involved and engrossed by the dashcam filming style. The voice acting is top notch, the little actual acting that there is is decent, but the atmosphere, the atmosphere is what absolutely nails this. I want to give it an 8 so bad, I just wish there was MORE! Okay, I'm giving it an 8.

Compared to another big name horror movie I recently saw, this blows NOSFERATU out of the water and it's not even close.

A film for all those who say The Blair Witch Project was tedious, stupid, or poorly acted, or rather, a real example of a film that is tedious, stupid, and poorly acted. Still, despite its many faults, Albert Pyun's Invasion does retain a modicum of creepiness, perhaps a testament to the first-person approach (here, through a cop car's camera) combined with mysterious horror. The end credits run for 16 minutes, or nearly a fifth of the movie's running time. They just keep going and going, and going, and going...and going, and going. And going some more. Is this review now long enough to be submitted? Yes, yes it is.

This movie is the most original horror film I have ever seen. It was so unpredictable that it really made me squirm. There's a overwhelming sense of dread right from the start even though everything seems humdrum normal. It almost has a documentary feel to it. Because you can't predict what's next and because the actors don't play the characters as stereotypes, the feeling of dread just keeps growing and growing until it does get almost unbearable. And the one shot gimmick really makes the film scarier because there is no relief and because its all from a police car camera you can't see what's outside of your view but you sure do hear it! The sound and music was outstanding and so were the actors who seemed like real people caught up instead of the typical sweat faced and blood covered actress you see running around chased by the typical (pick one knife, chainsaw, sadistic torture device) carrying maniac. It was how the film did what you couldn't see that made me so scared and paranoid. Just a very clever and inventive film. My negatives would be the title Invasion, which is about as unimaginative as it can be and I wish there were a few more incidents so the viewer can catch their breath. Bravo to this film.

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.'

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.