Infection

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.

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.

INFECTION (aka: INVASION) starts out semi-promising. A cop drives down a rural road in his patrol car, recording everything on his dash cam. It seems that a meteor has hit nearby, and something strange is going on as a result.

Unfortunately, this setup lingers on and on. And on, as various people drive the same police car down the same long stretch of road!

To be fair, a couple of zombie-types do wander about, but they only last for about 10 seconds. There are few scares, and even fewer interesting plot developments. Most scenes are made up of lengthy shots of empty road with absolutely no action.

As one of the so-called "found footage" films, this movie could be used as evidence for why the entire sub-genre should be abolished...

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.

'What did I do to deserve this?' the lead actress wails and I can't help but wail that question alongside with her.

This movie was told through the perspective of a dashboard mounted camera in a police car, so if watching the view of headlights illuminating a dirt road in the middle of the forest for over an hour is your idea of entertainment, then this is the movie for you! The basic idea of this 'film' is sound, meteorites fall to the earth in a small town and one by one the residents are infected with some kind of alien slug thing deposited in the ear. However, you see none of this. What you do see is headlight illuminated grass with low rent sound effects playing in the background to give the illusion that something intense is going on.

I kept waiting for something to happen, and when nothing happened I kept waiting for someone to bludgeon me over the head for being so stupid as to continue watching this tripe.

If this quantifies as a film, then next time I'm stuck in motorway traffic and not moving for over an hour, I'll just film it and lay a soundtrack of machine gun fire and helicopters over the top and call myself a filmmaker.