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.

I have always been a big fan of Asian horror, as the directors seem to have a knack for incredibly creepy visuals and creepy atmospheres. Kansen (Infection), is no exception to this, as it rivals Ju-On, Ringu and Gin Gwai for thrills and chills. What is really amazing is that there is no reliance on long haired girls or little boys, what is scary here is the hospital itself, and the characters within. This is very different to most supernatural horror films, as the story focuses on the characters for the majority of the film.

Infection is set in an under-staffed and under-financed hospital where the staff are under a lot of stress. One night, while trying to save a burns victim who has been there for three months, a young nurse accidentally gives him a lethal injection. Dr. Uozumi convinces all the other staff to create a false report to save the hospital. That same night a patient is brought in with a severe infection which causes the internal organs to liquefy. Soon all the staff are working together to discover what this disease is before it starts to spread to far.

As with most Japanese horror films, the plot is not wrapped up nicely, and in this case, it is the most puzzling of them all. Although I now have formed a solid conclusion for myself, it was still an incredibly confusing and muddled final 10 minutes. I think the last section could have been fixed up, as the pace slowed down after a very tight hour. However, the film is highly original for the most part and features some genuine scares and disgusting and beautiful visuals (much like Dario Argento's Suspiria). Amongst all the American trash being released, this stands tall and further proves that Asia (and Europe) are producing the highest quality horror.

3½/5

Not the best Asian horror film I had ever seen, but it was a bit entertaining just had a couple of loose ends. Of course, loose ends in a film such as this is very typical. The film is about a hospital that is understaffed and looks to be eroding quickly. Patients being dismissed when they should be getting immediate care, patients wandering the halls, and all in a very dreary looking hospital. I do believe I would rather die at my house than receive any care in this place. During the night things begin to happen as a ambulance driver keeps trying to get any hospital to take a patient of his who has a bad rash. Another burn victim falls from his bed and is in need of immediate care. The ambulance driver finds his way to this hospital and the doctor turns him away as he rushes to try and help the victim who has fallen from their bed. Well things are in chaos and the burn victim dies as the wrong combination of drugs is administered. Well despite one of the doctors saying he would take the blame the others want to cover it up. Thus the strange things ensue as the ambulance driver apparently left his patient who has a very strange condition and another doctor who has overheard the cover up wants to study this strange illness. Has its moments, but it has a lot of plot holes. Such as the strange suture guy, moving swings, fox boy and a host of other things. Things added for seemingly no other purpose than to try to make this movie more complicated than it really needed to be. Kind of made the ending crash as suture guy seemed so pointless as he was not involved in the whole thing then somehow he did something that seemed to suggest he may have had something to do with it. The setting and the atmosphere were great, but as to often happens in these films they try to make the ending as confusing as possible, to make themselves seem more clever. If you ask them what their intentions were they would probably not even know, you have to know what your intentions are when crafting an ending such as this so that when one thinks upon it everything can make sense, here I just can not tie it all together. Still, good enough to keep me entertained.

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.

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.