31 Days of Halloween: Viral

2016, Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman (Catfish) -- Netflix

If anything defined this year of Halloween movie watching, it was ... attention span. This night started as a watch of acclaimed ultra-low budget flick Skinamarink but was quickly identified that the 9000 opening atmospheric ultra-grainy video-camera shots of the ceiling were not going to keep our attention -- best left for another night. So, onto Netflix to find something.... fluffy. Not a lot of horror-comedies that caught our interest this year, so why not this old one that combines zombie-plague-creature-feature. I was also keen on seeing how a plague movie played out pre-COVID.

So, it begins in Obama's run as president, with some conversation about an epidemic that might or might not come to the US. The dialogue must have been about SARS but it all sounded sooooo familiar, and the playbook of how the government and the populace would deal with a quick quarantine was... predictive.

Emma (Sofia Black-D'Elia, Single Drunk Female) and Stacey (Lio Tipton, Lucy) are relatively new to town, having been moved there by Dad (Michael Kelly, Person of Interest) after some undefined family drama that has Mom absent. Emma is reserved and Stacey, with her blue streaked hair, is not. Like most of these movies, the emerging epidemic is happening on TV screens in the background mostly, but almost immediately Emma's friend Gracie is coughing up blood and the California desert suburban community is put under lockdown.

Grocery store stockup runs for food and toilet paper were replaced by a Dad run to the airport run to pickup Mom. The typical Dad stocked house has only.... condiments, so the girls have to fend for themselves. In very typical teen response to a lockdown, they go party in a partially finished home wherein the kids are attacked by the first fully infected kid, someone who Gracie coughed blood all over. And Stacey gets coughed upon.

At this point I should mention that this particular plague is parasite-based, worms in particular. There is some earlier commentary on dealing with bot fly larvae, but when Stacey gets a face full of blood we see a small worm quickly worm its way into her eye, which she, of course, denies happening. 

The rest of the movie follows the quick escalation of these movies. Dad never returns, the burb is cut off, soldiers are taking away the infected, Stacey's infection progresses slowly enough for her to hide it but the step-dad for Emma's love interest is not so subtle. By then, most of the burb is gone or infected and you can see the collapse of the US happening in the background. Yet, Emma believes she can save Stacey via the knowledge she gleaned from the science class she barely paid attention to. At least she didn't try to use Ivermectin, but in this case, it being an anti-parasitic for horses, it actually might have helped? 

Everything about this movie is horror-lite. The horrific zombie-scenes are scant, the wormy depictions are minor (wiggly worms coming out of ears & eyes), and the horde of chasing infected is relegated to one scene. Mostly the movie is about the love between two sisters, but even that is on the lite side. So, for our last night of Lack of Attention Span, it was a fine choice.