Mini-budget addicting to the contagion film by a horrific means, this is the promise of Viral, available in the busty Halloween selection Shadowz. Well? Little harmless flu or good influenza underestimated? Answer below...
From Paranormal Activity to Virus
The two foals of the Blumhouse stable – Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman – tying to four hands to the realization of Viral, after the documentary Catfish, a failed attempt to resuscitate the universe Paranomal Activity (in this case flaps 3 and 4), and the mid-raisin thriller with the new screen queen Emma Roberts Title Nerve. Mini-budget, Blumhouse logic and the scummed theme, this is the basic material of this little horror film.
Synopsis level, nothing new under the sun. The family of Emma (Sofia Black-D-Elia), a timid high school girl stuck between an extraverted sister, a couple of parents in crisis and a move that stirs the foundations of their family. Yet, helped by her intrusive sister, Emma will quickly get closer to Evan (Travis Tope), a high school student with whom she shares teaching hours. But if their romance is about to begin, a strange infection is transmitted by blood – and very unsavory worms – shake their pellin. The United States is quickly on alert.
Like an air of pre-seen...
If the science fiction of this film could interview in 2017 (when it was released), it still becomes much less impressive after going through our VOCID-19 pandemic. Theories of smoking politics, paranoia separating the population, the clandestine gaps in order to counter the proliferation of bans, are themes that have indeed been forced to come close to us and which only capture very little of us at the viewing of Viral.
This little feature film is also very shy. Endorsing all the shots of contagion films (28 days later, Contagion, Last train to Busan and by the way), Viral It proposes only a lukewarm and constantly below the above examples. If he takes the time to properly characterize his characters, clichetal decals of everything that the Ten-movies Horrifics have been able to propose so far in terms of family in crisis, adolescent couples and life of bahut, it is to delay as late as possible the arrival of the virus and the few gore effects that it imposes: vomiting of blood, body changes and access to violence.
Warm fever
Where they could have proposed an ultra-condensed and feverish film, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman stick to the format of an hour and a half of film without cutting tens of minutes of greasy weight and making him decisively ungenerous on his horrific pan. And to fill the voids, they use a romance as heavy as it is, allowing the feature film to close on a pending end selling the bold hope of the directors to make a sequel from which we will be – thank God! – spared. At least for now...
A movie that will only have viral name... A flu at most, which will be hatched in 1h30 before you forget it completely, without fever or sequelae if it is some symptoms actually long as an insidious infection to the retina. You've been warned. Only if Viral We seem decisively unconvincing, Shadowz Halloween Selection But it is still pantacruel: some 40 films, including Junk Head, The Planet of the Vampires Bava or Good Boy that we'd been running live from NIFFF.
I had discovered it during the 24th edition of the Gérardmer Festival (in 2017) and I had it at the time rather appreciated: « Surprisingly touching, this intimate disaster film with melancholic atmosphere and the last straight line stressful is a beautiful surprise taking from end to end ».