A review of "Infected"

Confessions of a Film Junkie: A review of “Infected”

By: Brian Cotnoir

I attended the Horror Movie and Music convention Rock N Shock in 2012 and one of the things I was most excited about was going to the amateur film festival that they have every year.  I was looking forward to seeing some new Horror films made by some directors and films companies local to the area.  Most of the films I saw we’re pretty low-budget so I couldn’t judge them for being bad, but the one film that got top-billing at Rock N Shock and generated quite a deal of buzz was “Infected”.  I was excited to see this film because it was the one film at the festival that had a few notable actors; including Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Christy Romano (aka Ren Stevens from the Disney TV show “Even Stevens”) and William Forsythe (Dear Mr. Gacy).  This was the only film at the festival that required a ticket or pass to see (because of the Q & A with the cast after the film) and unfortunately by the time I showed up to the convention they were all sold out and I couldn’t get in.  I was disappointed because I was hoping that I’d get to meet William Forsythe.  Fortunately for me, he canceled his appearance at the last minute, so at least I didn’t miss out on that chance.  Well 9 months later the film has appeared on Netflix Instant so I finally get a chance to see “Infected”.  So was it everything like I hoped it was going to be?  Not even close. 

    The film is the story of three men and their adult kids who are go on a weekend hunting trip in the woods somewhere in Rhode Island.  The dads are focused on hunting and drinking beer, while the kids could care less about this little trip.  Unfortunately, for them a mysterious blood virus has been traveling through the woods and is infecting everyone, turning them into violent flesh eating maniacs.                   

Where's the "Skip Entirely" Option???

First of all this film doesn’t have much focus.  Is this supposed to be a cabin-in-the-woods style horror or a post-apocalyptic zombie horror?  I don’t know.  The story seems to be jumping back and forth between two sub-genres and it’s really confusing.  Especially, in the last 15 minutes where the film just seems to lose focus on its original story.  I can’t tell if it was done that way on purpose or if it was because the film was intended to be longer and they ran out of money, or if it was just really poor editing, or what, but no matter what this films story does not flow well.  Not to mention that we keep randomly getting introduced to some characters throughout the film and some of these characters sound like they are important to the plot, but they’re not really properly established and we don’t get a good explanation as to who they are or what they’re doing in the film.                                                 

What are you wearing, Mr. Forsythe???

    Most of the acting is pretty mediocre.  Michael Madsen is bad, Christy Romano is hardly in the film so there’s really not enough to establish who her character is in the film, and William Forsythe looks and sounds like he’s in the wrong film.  Just the way his character dresses in the film makes him look more like a secondary character from a 1970’s episode of Dr. Who.  Even the way he talks in the film he doesn’t sound like he belongs there, he sounds like he should be playing a character in a much better film.  It’s sad because William Forsythe is a good actor, but he’s not good in this film.        

I call B.S. on your explanation!

Another thing that confuses me about his character is that he get’s infected with the blood virus and yet he can still speak and he is not driven to eat human flesh.  All the other people who are infected can’t speak they can only growl or roar and they all want to eat flesh.  What makes Forsythe’s character immune to this?  We get some bull sh!t explanation from his character that if you fight the urge to eat human flesh long enough that you are immune to it, but I’m just not buying that.  I also wasn’t buying was the films explanation for the blood virus.  According to a radio report in the film the blood virus is a “new strain of Lyme Disease”.  Okay, I’m not a medical expert, but I’ve known a couple people who have gotten Lyme disease and no strain of Lyme disease would ever, ever make you hunger for human flesh.  This film is about as medically accurate as “Birdemic: Shock and Terror”.                     

The Only reason you should bother with this film

     So should you see this film?  No.  Maybe it’s because I was expecting much more out of this film, but it wasn’t that good; even for a low-budget film.  The only part of the film I actually liked was when this prostitute character (who was on screen for a whopping 2 minutes) brought one of her clients to the woods and we got to see her take her clothes off before she got attacked.  She had amazing t!ts and was pretty much the only enjoyable part of this film.  Maybe, I am being too harsh on this film, but I still say that if you see it you will be disappointed.