Virus (1999)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Not even bad in a good way

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

"Virus", brings to the screen the story of a crew whose ship is badly damaged when struck by a typhoon in the Pacific, as it stumbles across a seemingly abandoned Russian ship. Things get a bit more complicated when they are introduced to the ship's new occupants... Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, and the rest of the cast carry out their performances very well.The plot is full of holes. Once the computer comes on, the first thing it does is sink the American ship, which means it is still stranded in the ocean. It has apparently read all the Russian computers, and does not realize that if it keeps sinking ships, they will just sink it. Also the Russian navy would send a destroyer to sink it if they lost contact and found Americans on it. The director apparently forgot he was on a ship, and it builds a machine for itself as big as a room, but manages to move through the doorway and gangways of a ship without leaving a clue. Once the Americans turn back on the power., all the little robots that it built out of parts of Computers and ship come to life, and start building more of the little monsters. Yet two of the Americans, watch this to find the robots antics funny rather then completely strange. They are attacked by half man, half machine robots, who have the worst aim possible. In corridors and rooms it fires off magazine after magazine of machine gun fire, and hits nothing.The dialogue is mostly very good with tension build up and intense lines. Action scenes however, loaded with special effects and saturated with a coarse taste of humour, subtracts from the atmosphere and status of the film considerably. Towards the end, the plot becomes untenable as it twists and turns into the more and more ridiculous. The Story line I found was ultimately very weak and character development practically non-existent. I felt technically the film was well made and transitions sound, but the directing was a bit of a let down.Overall rating: 6 out of 10.

Virus (1999): Dir: John Bruno / Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, Joanna Pacula, Marshall Bell: Pure crap with a theme regarding man as a virus. At least the actors can refer to this film as a career virus. It regards a Russian cruise ship with robotic creatures that kill people for body parts particularly the brain. Never mind how they originated. That would take brains to explain. These creatures need electricity but sinking the ship never alarms anyone here. The characters are done in with flat dialogue and serve no other purpose other than to shout over loud noise and die horribly. Jamie Lee Curtis revisits her "Scream Queen" days but perhaps to her worst effort. William Baldwin plays the so-called hero who will make narrow escapes. Donald Sutherland delivers perhaps the worst performance of his career as the ship's Captain who tries to communicate with these robotic creatures. The results are both horrifying and laughable when he goes through a transformation that must rank as an all time embarrassing low in an otherwise flourishing career. Joanna Pacula also appears among those who hope that this film won't be revisited again. Director John Bruno does an uninspiring job and lends more to the visual effects than anything. Dreadful film where studios fork over millions of dollars to create garbage. Now they just need a trash compactor to do it in. Score: 2 / 10

No wonder Jamie lee Curtis stated that this movie was the worst in her entire career. Its alright all in all but the focus of the movie is on a Russian science ship that is found by Donald Sutherlands crew. The Ship is alive and thinks the Crew is a virus. OK no problem right? seems not to bad. Until you start to watch it, the characters seem rather odd and somewhat hard to take seriously, Donald Sutherland sounds strange at times as if hes trying to do an accent every so often but never pans out what kind of accent he was trying to achieve. Every character is very bland and you find it hard to focus on the happenings around them, cliché lines and cheesy robotic bad guys. Humans turned into robots just seem strange rather than scary, they are supposed to be threatening i guess to the crew but they always manage to get their butts kicked quickly, so much for the robot humans. Sometimes there is moments that don't make sense. At the start of the film when first finding the science ship they make note there is no weapons on board. But throughout the movie we find machine guns, a Missile room?, and various other weapons throughout the ship. The movie is a B rated movie at best but to be fair to B rated movies this is actually not even that good. Id pass up this movie if I were you but its your choice if you really like bad flicks.

Although many agree that films that use or recycle elements from successful previous franchises, end up not being entertaining or appealing, there are always a few that go against the grain. An example of those kinds of movies is like Leviathan (1989) and Screamers (1995). Well, Virus (1999) is not much different from those.The movie is based off of a series Dark Horse comics written by Chuck Pfarrer in the early 90s. The story is about how the crew of a tugboat stumble upon an abandoned ship. Inside, they discover that an electrical alien lifeform has taken control of the ship and has been using parts of the ship and its crewmembers to create robotic creatures to do its dirty work. Now its up to the crew to figure out how to rid the ship of this "virus" before it docks on dry land and takes control of other computers. So it's like Alien (1979) mixed with The Terminator (1984), OK so? It is not like Universal Studios was trying to out match these films, each film must be treated for what its worth and not as who's better than the original. William Baldwin, horror heroine Jaime Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland and Joanna Pacula are just of the few actors that star in this film. I'd say that not many of these characters were memorable, but they do share good sarcastic lines, quirky reaction faces and fierce retaliations. I did laugh a lot at the character of Capt. Robert Everton played by Sutherland. Even though it probably wasn't intended to be funny, Sutherland is able to make his character come out with deadpan lines and a sadistic sense of humor. My question is, how did any of these characters come together as one group in the script? Screenwriter Pfarrer wrote the dialog like they hated each other from the start. What kind of crew is that? I'm surprised anything was accomplished with how much bickering took place. However, this didn't happen all to often because soon they had to work together. Surprisingly, this is one of the things I didn't realize. It took about until half way before the pace started to increase and that may make viewers restless. The gunfire and blood is there. The actual gore may be a bit low for gorehounds but it is still enjoyable. Not to mention there are also some "boo" moments too and that may catch audiences off guard even if most people won't find it frightening. Adding to the creepiness of the setting's atmosphere is composer Joel McNeely's orchestral score. It may not be extraordinarily inventive, but simplistically, it gets its point across in making the scenes work with the music to enhance the viewing experience. Finally, I have to give the most credit to director John Bruno. To say the film didn't work because a visual effects supervisor was given a chance to direct doesn't mean squat. Bruno is a talented man and his ability to make Chuck Pfarrer's vision come to fruition was done professionally. One of the scenes I found the most astounding was the sweatshop room where two of the crew members run into an area where numerous amounts of robots are being made by robotic arms. It was done surprisingly well, almost too well because of how realistic it was. Bruno should be given more credit for this reason alone.Like many other movies, Chuck Pfarrer's Dark Horse comic adaptation reuses elements from other movies. And although its story is not creative, it is still fun, especially for its special effects, cast members and musical score.