Virus X |
  • USA • 2010 • 85m •   • Directed by: Ryan Stevens Harris. • Starring: Jai Day, Domiziano Arcangeli, Joe Zaso, Dylan Vox, Sybil Danning, Sasha Formoso, Kyra Groves, Bo Burroughs, Jillian Easton, Stuart G. Bennett, Lejla Hadzimuratovic, Steven Bordelon, Ron Ruhman. • Music by: Shawn K. Clement.    A group of medical scientists are quarantined inside their lab after being infected with a deadly hyper-mutant form of the H1N1 virus. With only 3 days left to live they have no way to escape and no way out. While the deceitful head doctor monitors them from a hidden surveillance room the scientists must uncover the harrowing truth behind their detainment and force their own way to freedom.
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Review:
Malcolm Burr (Jai Day) is the new doctor hired at a virus research project. He thinks he's helping the world, but the whole thing is really an evil effort to create and release a virus so the project's benefactor, the weirdly old Mrs. Herrington (Sybil Danning) can get even richer selling the antidote. While Burr and his thinly written co-workers are at work in the lab, the project director, Dr. Gravamen (Joe Zaso), is overseeing secret human experiments where people are infected to find the deadliest virus possible. One of those test subjects gets loose, Malcolm and his co-workers get drenched in her infected blood, Dr. Gravamen seals the lab and leaves them inside to die. Can Malcolm and the others save themselves? I didn't care while watching this film and neither will you.
Virus X contains no nudity, very little violence and only an ordinary amount of gore. The characters don't even run and do much of anything. They just talk, which makes me suspect that RSH and his co-writer Jeremiah Campbell thought they had the chops to write an honest to goodness drama, something smart and skillful enough to rise above its low budget genre roots. They were mistaken. Let me give you an example of their storytelling "talent".
One of the Malcolm's co-workers is revealed to be an informerspy secretly working for Mrs. Herrington. Now, we never see him do any informing or spying, but that's not the point. It's never explained what he's supposed to be informing on or spying about, but that's not the point. No, the point is that everywhere in the lab in monitored by hidden video cameras, through which Dr. Gravamen can see everything that's going on. If you've got that kind of surveillance of unsuspecting people in a completely enclosed environment, what purpose is an undercover agent supposed to serve? Relaying water cooler gossip or the results of the lab team's fantasy football league? This may not seem like a big deal, but the spy guy has the most personality and the 2nd most back story of any character in the whole production and it is all totally pointless! Malcolm's other three co-workers have all the inner life of department store mannequins, while this spy guy is given motivation, an agenda and even something close to a character arc. And yet, everything about him is unnecessary and superfluous!
That little bit of stupidity, however, is left in the dust by Dr. Gravamen's thug. His name is Jerron and his job is to obtain human test subjects and take care of any problems that arise. Given the setting and substance of Virus X, what do you think Jerron would look like? A corporate killer in a finely tailored suit? Perhaps a paramilitary operative in fatigues and combat boots? Maybe just a looming figure in a hazmat suit and breathing mask? Well, what Jerron actually looks like is an aging "club kid" with a platinum blonde wig, black leather pants, a big ass black leather belt, a long sleeved black shirt and straps up and down his arms. Why does he look like that? Because Jerron is apparently a replicant who somehow escaped from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and wound up in this dung heap of cinema. No, I'm not kidding you. Jerron is an artificial life form that looks like the middle aged spawn of Pris and Roy Batty. His existence doesn't fit with anything else in the film, but that itself pales when compared to Jerron inexplicably blowing his brains out after getting stabbed in the face with a syringe.
I wanted to go into the ridiculous male model haircut on Jai Day, RSH's repeated use of establishing shots long after he's established all that needs to be established and his use of the mega-tired technique of ADHD constant camera movement, but after telling you about spy guy, Jerron and that Virus X had no nudity, very little violence and only an ordinary amount of gore why bother? Watch this at your own risk.
Review by MBunge from the Internet Movie Database.
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