Virus X (2010)

An absolute waste of money

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I have to take my hat off to filmmaker Ryan Stevens Harris. With Virus X, he had the makings of your garden variety, piece o' crap, sci-fi schlock fest. This could have been nothing more than the same parade of questionable acting, dubious writing and enervating direction we've all seen so many times before. That obviously wasn't bad enough for Ryan Stevens Harris, hereafter referred to as RSH. He went the extra mile and then some to be sure this movie would leave a lasting impressing on the viewer, like a 9 iron in a baby's skull. RSH wasn't content to let this thing pass blandly before our eyes. He wanted to make us stop and marvel at how wretched it is.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 informer/spy 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.

It's a cheap Science Fiction movie. That's a good thing on a depressed night, like a half gallon of chocolate ice cream. But this one is so bad it doesn't satisfy. Nor is it so bad that it is a comedy.It's a gore fest about a designer plague and a bunch of scientists trapped in a small lab area where the infection has broken out. I could go into more details about the ridiculous plot, the bad special effects or the lousy make-up but let's skip to the highlight of the movie, the sex scenes. By the time they finally decide that it's time to go get naked they're all dying from the plague and look really gross. So you don't even get to enjoy some hot boobs.

From the movie cover for "Virus X", I had expected something else entirely than what it turned out to be. The cover looked fairly interesting, but the movie turned out to be far from it.The story in "Virus X" is somewhat captivating in some aspects, but the overall picture is a tarnished and dull result. It was like the air went out of the balloon way before the movie had reached the mid-point of the length. However, the approach to the H1N1 virus strain was perhaps the best take in the movie.As for the cast in this movie, well I can't say that I am familiar with any of them, nor do I even recall having seen any of their faces anywhere. And that is a good thing, because you don't need to be a big, famous Hollywood star to be a good actor. There were some fairly good performances in the movie, but there were also some mediocre ones. And I would say the overall acting scale was just above mediocre, so don't get your hopes up for this one.I had expected more suspense and thrills, perhaps even the occasional scare, but there was no such things. There were some build-ups for some, but they turned out in an anti-climatic way unfortunately."Virus X" comes out on the other side of the tunnel with a flat tire, so to speak. It was, to me, a disappointing movie, and I will not be making a second return to give it another chance. For movies of this caliber, there are others available that have better story lines, plots, and that are more interesting. Sadly, "Virus X" failed to deliver.I found a cure to "Virus X" and that was the 'Stop' and 'Eject' buttons.

If you're one of the few people out there who look forward to Albert Pyun's movies, I think you're in for a treat. We may actually have the first director actually inspired by Pyun here. Along with the awesome overacting (at least one of them must have gone to Billy Drago's school of acting), I was in B movie heaven. Featuring a rich psychopath who essentially wants to rule the world (right out of a James Bond movie) and a gun-wielding killer who ruminates philosophically before he kills his victims, Virus X really knows how to lay on the cheese, and yet it has this deadly earnestness, like all the best unintentionally funny movies. That's not to say that this is a poorly made movie. It's actually surprisingly competent, and I thought the directing shows promise. Maybe with more money and a better concept, we'll see some good scifi thrillers coming from him. As it stands, this is more of a rainy day rental than anything else. Cybil Danning shows up as the aforementioned rich psychopath, in case you're a fan. I'm not. But, hey, it just increases the B movie cred.