hasmicdesigns

My now wife and fellow cast members of the Louisiana Renaissance Festival are the 'citizens' at the beginning of this monstrosity. I had to watch it out of obligation to them at the time....... and it was bad. The best part of this film? The box cover lies about Billy Zane's role! He doesn't wear armor and fight! Instead he sits on his ass making dumb jokes about armies of children and mothers. The only times he leaves the throne are to 1) go to bed on the floor in front of it with his harem and 2) To die in the most ridiculous way possible. The effects are crap, the acting is mediocre, the costuming is alright, a lot of poor decisions made in editing. All in all a bad movie not even worthy of infamy like Troll 2 and The Room. Definitely a movie to skip.

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.