Infection

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.