Review: Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)

Stars: Justin Ipock

Budget: $1 Million


Directed By: Ana Clavell, James Dudelson

Contagium, contagium a word that makes you think germs, infection and just icky shit.
Despite being part 2 its supposedly an origin story for the first one, yet doesn't really have a massive amount to do with the original either.

Made for only one million the film does use some pretty good practical effects in it's oddly convoluted story. The acting is very B-movie quality by people I haven't seen in anything else other than this film.

This film does not take place anywhere near the locations of the original either, it feels like a way to cash in on a familiar name. Pretty much like the way asylum does when they release something similarly named to some big movie. Difference being asylum do on occasion make something at the least entertaining.

So here we go, in Russia in 1968 a group of soldiers break into a hospital where some kind of patient 0 is being cared for. They start killing people, one of the junior doctors grabs a phial then hides it in a thermos flask. He manages to escape the hospital but is gunned down dropping the thermos in the woods. The rest of the hospital is shot up then blown up with C4.
37 years later a group of patients at the rebuilt hospital happen to find the thermos buried in a tiny amount of soil. The puny people are unable to open a rusted shut flask so entrust it one of the other members. You may notice i'm not naming people, that because it's hardly worth it. The acting is blander than tap water with only the zombie acting being a slight highlight.

When one the others steals the flask after another has some kind of bad feeling about opening it, he manages to crack it open releasing the phial. This group of fucktards are now ground zero. By the night they each start feeling a little sick. One of them contacts a friend he thinks might know about the phial, somehow out of nowhere.
The next day some of them notice patches of dead weeping flesh appearing on their body, Emma, yes i had to name one of the idiots, is apparently pregnant. She gets angry and bites a guy on the arm unknowingly infecting him. Three of the other start to have advanced symptoms, dead flesh, coughing blood and thick varicose veins.
They and anyone else who they've been in contact with are quarantined to their dorm. The one who contacted their friend gets a message back not to open the phial its a virus that mutates human DNA. Later that night the man bitten by Emma dies.

Getting worse and worse Emma's friend manages to get hold of a gun which he uses to go see her, not before killing a guard. Marshal (the dead bitten guy) reanimates. This is the part where people start to die and reanimate a lot now, along with the main cast. It's a such a convoluted mess of mismatching circumstances it made my head hurt. Like some people are proper zombies yet others can come back fully coherent, albeit not for to long.
Anyway nearly everyone dies by either turning into a zombie and attacking someone, or being betrayed by someone else. Emma ends up with one of the others near the end and has her baby, that story ends there we then see a news crew attacked by a horde of zombies

Yeah THN where we rarely spoil the endings of films, unless of course they are total rubbish not worth watching at all. This film has NOTHING to do with Day of the dead, its a cash grab name just to dupe people out of their money.
THN awards Day of the Dead 2: Contagium 0 stars out of 5

Review: Virus (1999)

Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland

Budget: $75 million

Directed By: John Bruno

In a world where we are now facing a global pandemic, i mean wtf else can go wrong these days?
I really am waiting on everything to go mad max or the walking dead. Lets lighten the load with some movies that take that name, premise or just idea and run with it.
Welcome to Corona Virus contagion month.

Here's our first one a massive project from the late nineties directed by John Bruno who is no stranger to making big budget films, though just as a visual expert. He even worked with some of the cast before too, like Jamie Lee Curtis on True Lies.
But nothing significant in the directorial capacity before or pretty much after this.
Unfortunately a lot of said cast have came out and outright bashed the film saying it's possibly the worst film they've worked on.
Is this fair?
Is this true?
Let's take a look at Virus, some of it's flaws but also some of it's strengths, if there's any to find.

In space we see a weird lightning like thing streaking through the cosmos, it hits a Russian space station killing all the astronauts. It then gets transmitted down through the radio wave into a Russian ship called the Volkov (longer than that but that's what i'm calling it).
We then join the tugboat Sea Star, Donald Sutherland (Robert) is it's alcoholic captain, an ass hole through and through as we'll see more later. When bad weather hits he forces the crew to keep their salvage despite it possibly sinking them. It does get lost anyway, also the engine room gets damaged then starts taking on water.

When they get to middle of the storm (the eye) the water magically calms down then they spot a new vessel on their radar. When they board after no reply they realize the ship could be worth millions in salvage, with one caveat there has to be no one alive on board. Finding the majority of electronic on the ship have been destroyed or removed they all get a weird feeling. Especially when they capture glimpses of things out the corner of their eyes.

When they restore power to ship is when the shit really hits the fan, they all slowly piece together that something bad has happened with the electronics on the ship. Especially when they find some survivors that tell them it has gained sentience. They even eventually manage to contact the sentient life force. It unfortunately see's human as some kind of plague that needs to be destroyed. It then starts to make weird machine/human pieces robots to attack them.

Most of the crew admit they can't let this thing reach the mainland or it will spread and possibly destroy the human race. Robert however doesn't seem like the idea of leaving this much money behind, to the extent he makes a deal with the life force to help it kill the others.
Unfortunately like some of the other crew he gets changed into a machine human cyborg hybrid even after striking this deal. The crew gets whittled down to just Jamie lee's Kelly, Baldwin's Foster and one of the other survivors from the actual Volkov.

That's where i'll end this as we don't spoil films here at THN unless they are ungodly bad, so even though Virus does have it flaws, being another take on alien. It does have some very good practical effects even CGI for it's time. It does get tense and very dark at time especially when we see some of the horrible machine/human hybrids the entity makes from bits and pieces. I'd even say it influenced Ghost Ship (2002) that came afterwards with a very similar story. THN awards Virus a strong 2 out of 3 stars, it's worth one watch.

THN News: Scream 5

News in that a sequel?
Is on the boards for the series that revived the slasher horror franchise in the nineties, giving the killers a more human yet possibly scarier tone.
The project slated to begin production in may of this year (though with the corona virus tipped to be at it's peak by then it may get pushed back) I was very skeptical of a fifth movie in this franchise especially after hearing the brief, maybe somewhat unimaginative synopsis.

Spoilers after the ghostface!


After a spate of killings in her home town, a woman returns to try and find out who the killer is.
That's all we have at the moment, I think it sounds A LOT like scream 4, but there are also rumors that this might be one of them pseudo remake/reboot things.
I like the fact though that if it is they are so far keeping the numbering system. So I was a bit uum and ahh about this initially until I read who is behind it.

Ready or Not's directors Matthew Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet that amazing movie staring Samara Weaving showed great character development and how to truly write a good hero character. Either male or female, start off flawed then work your way to bad ass by the final act, so i am not worried in the directors one bit there.

More quell my fears are the rest of the production team and writers coming back too such as those guys third wheel Chad Villella as executive producer along with OG writer on past scream films Kevin Williamson, all in a neat bow under Spyglass films.
These factors have me believe that something good could come of this production, there's no ties any of the original actors coming back yet, which is a good and bad thing as if Sydney came back AGAIN and either survived again or actually died I think that alienate a lot of fans one way or another, maybe some kind of connection in the end would be enough suffice I think.
Hope you've enjoyed this report THN signing out!

THN: Sequel It!: Nightmare on Elm Street

The votes were set, I somehow thought this was inevitable though. Seems the next sequel it! people wanted to see was NoES. I think I know where I need to go with this one, in terms of casting it's a hard one, un like Ft13TH there's not a lot of survivors from past films in this franchise.
Where to start it off too, do i continue from Freddy's dead or new nightmare?
As with FvJ I am keeping that one a separate entity from this series, like a side step in you will. Who knows I may well do a sequel it! to FvJ one day (I think that's also inevitable).

Right so I think I've got ideas, this will be set after new nightmare, but in a psuedo twist it'll be a sequel to part 6 too, it'll sequel BOTH of them one as a film within a film I think. something to do with daydreaming, Freddy gets powerful enough to even invade simple thoughts.

Nightmare on Elm Street 8: Never Sleep Again

Cast:

Heather Langenkamp as Nancy/herself
Robert Englund as Freddy/Himself
Lisa Wilcox as Alice/Herself
Other people as Other people

Synopsis:
So we open like many Nightmare films with a female star staring at the Elm Street house in puzzled wonderment while the little girls in white dresses skip rope on the grassy yard. The girl walks into the house where all the usual stuff happens.
She follows screeching noises down into the basement, down there are rows of gurneys small children's bodies covered apart from their black shoe covered feet stick out out of the bottom of coverings.
we see the clawed glove screech along the pipes followed by the raw laughter of Freddy. She is stalked screaming running down the usual piped hallways with steam jets etc. Freddy seems to be able to cut her off every direction she turns.
Then she is caught by him only to have the knifed glove thrust into her stomach killing her. In the real world the girl who was in school stands up to the horror of everyone spraying blood around the classroom.

The screen turns a little blurry here then pulls out to a cinema room, we see the whole audience who are in fact watching a preview to a new movie. We focus in on a group of friends watching the film. One asks another what was the name of this film again?
One laughs being poked another, "The Springwood slasher"
"Oh this is the one based on that killer from years ago"
"Yeah then a bunch of parents roasted the guy and he supposedly came back to haunt their dreams"
"OOOOOH OOOH OH" shouts another forming a spooky noise.
A few other people turn frowning in the audience.
Two of the stars Robert England and Heather Langenkamp are doing a press release in a bookshop down from here next week before the main showing.
"Who is who in the film?"
"Heather plays the main girl Nancy's mother"
"Yeah and Robert plays the Springwood slasher Freddy"
"Didn't she play some mother in a film similar to this a few years back"
"Oh yeah that new nightmare with the demon invading dreams"
"It was bad"
All the while we hear familiar voices coming from the screen. The last girl seems weird as the rest of the cinema seems to drown out and warp for her, becoming totally empty. She hears familiar laughing but the screen has gone blank, frowning she looks around shivering. walking down the steps to the entrance the doors suddenly burst open to show us only a back-lit dark shadow in the doorway.
"You'll all remember" it says menacing then flicks it's clawed hand in a scissor like fashion.
The girl Tina awakes suddenly.
"The film that boring Tina?" A boy remarks.
"Shut up Tod, i had a late night" She scold him.
"Certainly wasn't with me!" the rest of them 'ooooh' in response.
We see from the screen that comes back into clear view, it almost seems like the Freddy on the screen is watching them. Then they all turn back to watch the rest of the movie that moves on once they do, then the scene fades to black.

Now throughout the week in the film the teens will each dream encounter Freddy who is not strong enough to kill them yet. as the film is about to open wide spread they each say to each other they believe the the film opening will give him all the power he needs to break through into their dreams and kill them.
They go to see Heather and Robert before the showing to try and get them to halt the release of the film. Heather and Robert strangely believe them but do not think they have time to prevent the showing. Heather remarks it feels like all this happened before, Robert says the character he played felt like it had a strange power. Tina decides to run to the premier to at least get it to stop there.

Unfortunately the showing is already on when she rushes into the screen to tell everybody to leave time slows down, the screen takes on a fuzzy dream like quality. Freddy on the screen looks down at Tina, his features burning away to leave a heavily burnt face.
"Ah back in the prime time bitch, your too late!"
Krueger reaches a massive arm out of the screen, the audience applaud Tina see's their faces are all blank as they clap. a massive finger blade pierces her stomach. She coughs up blood.
The others reach the movie theater as Tina burst out the doors cradling her belly.
"It's too late" She says through blood stained lips, then dies.

The rest of the movie the other teens, Robert and heather stage a coup of the film and try to review bomb it and slander it as bad to decrease Freddy's power. One by one they are picked off, until the news hits that copycat kills have been happening around the country. Freddy is so powerful that even if you let thought wander into daydream territory he can try to get you there too and does with one of the teens.
Heather and Robert are called to do an interview where they will decide weather to ban the film the or not, they realise this is the only the chance they have left and have to keep them alive to debate that the film should.

In his changing room, Robert is attacked by Freddy but not killed instead he locks Robert away in his own mind and takes over his body.
I'm not sure how it would go from here other than Robert trying to kill Heather on live TV, this is in fact the catalyst to banning the film though, He loses control over Roberts body but he is in a forever coma locked away.

Ending wise we see the remaining Teens and Heather over a copy of the film, they say it's ended for them now but films like this always gather a cult following if that fan base ever gets big enough again may be Freddy would come back.
After credits role we see Robert in a hospital bed, he smiles with Freddy's laugh echoing out in his dreams.