DVD Review
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Director |
Masayuki Ochiai
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Cast |
Michiko Hada
Mari Hoshino
Tae Kimura
Yoko Maki
Kaho Minami
Moro Morooka
Shirô Sano
Koichi Sato
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Distributor |
Tartan Video |
DVD Origin |
United Kingdom |
DVD Release Date |
24th July 2006 |
Running Time |
98 Minutes |
Number of Disks |
1 |
Certification |
18
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Reviewed By
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Stuart Crawford
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Buy this film
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INFECTION (2004)
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Imagine (unless you actually do) how difficult it must be to work in a hospital. Now add to that a large number of staff leaving and a lack of supplies. Mix in a mentally deranged granny who can see dead people in reflections and add a dash of disease that turns your insides into green mush. If you can get all of this together in that twisted brain of yours, then you can start to understand the ideas that come together to make the film Infection.
It starts with the red flashing light of an ambulance and a voice over asking for help with a patient. Apparently this individual has a rather nasty rash and is need of some urgent medical attention. No one responds. We then flick to the hospital. A dark, dank place, with few patients and fewer staff. Supplies have stopped arriving and the doctors and nurses are leaving, save for a few die-hards that stay on to take care of the dwindling number of bedded residents and drop-ins.
We go back to the flashing light, and more voice over, this time with more urgency, describing how the rash is quickly spreading and that the condition of the man is rapidly decreasing. Again, no takers. The death of a patient, due to a blunder by a nurse, leads to more tension and panic. A devious plot is hatched to hide the mistake and during the heightened stress levels that this causes, guess who’s dropped off by an ambulance crew? The arrival of this new guest is where the plot thickens and the horror part of this story starts. The rash spreads and the body quickly deteriorates, eventually turning into a green slime. This affliction quickly spreads and soon more and more pools of green goo start appearing. And this is where I’ll leave the story save to say that there are plot twists toward the end that are quite unexpected but nothing too original.
I didn’t like this film. Which is a shame. It’s the first release in the J-horror series, the second of which, Premonition, I also reviewed a month back and only gave a mediocre score to. As this is the premiere title I was hoping that it was going to be a real punch in the face to get the ball rolling, but it wasn’t even a playful slap on the arse with a wet towel. It wasn’t scary or particularly gory, the effects were quite poor and the story was very weak. The plot twist at the end helps to pick it up out of complete uselessness, but I did spend a lot of this film clock watching. Oh, and I fell asleep once. It just didn’t hold me.
Anyone out there that loves their Eastern Horrors will no doubt like this movie. They’ll argue that the big budget Hollywood movies are too obvious, too loud and blood soaked, and that a good horror relies more on what the audience feels and not what gets pumped into their brain. Good horror is thinking horror. And to an extent I would agree. However, as much as I like using the old grey matter when I’m engrossed in a film, I have to actually be engrossed and not wanting the thing to end. I don’t want to be spoon fed everything, but after this had finished I was still hungry. Lets hope that the third film (Takashi Shimizu's Reincarnation) in the series stands head and shoulders above its older cousins as this is a poor start to what could have been a fantastic series. The screener copy of the film that we received did not have any extras.
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Score
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4 / 10
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