Whoever first thought to have the bright idea of transporting the intergalactic terrors of Alien to the depths of the ocean must be feeling pretty pleased with themselves. I mean, even though I’m fairly certain it takes to same amount of time and effort to fake being in or on the ocean as it does being in space, such fun flicks as Leviathan, Deep Star Six, Deep Blue Sea and Deep Rising delivered B-movie chuckles at a reliable rate. However, one movie that never seems to get mentioned all that much is 1999’s Virus, a sci-fi shocker that took a high concept comic from publisher Dark Horse and attempted to turn it into the next Aliens/The Thing on the high seas.
Of course, the fact that it isn’t mentioned all that much should probably clue you in on how it all turned out – and it that didn’t, then star Jamie Lee Curtis’ rather unflattering comments about it should paint an even clearer picture. But is Virus really all that bad? Careful there readers; we’re about to catch a healthy dose of crap.
There seems to be trouble afoot on the Russian research vessel Akademik Vladislav Volkov after a sizable alien energy source is beamed down to their ship via the beleaguered Mir space station. Not only has some sort of sentient alien virus penetrated their computer systems that inexplicably squeals like a pig, but it seems that some truly heinous shit is about to befall the crew. However, we cut away from whatever inhuman razzmatazz is occurring to the hapless Russians in favour of the crew of the tug boat Sea Star as we find them struggling in a major storm seven days later. But as tempestuous as the weather is outside, it’s actually worse inside as the crew seem utterly fed up with their captain’s dangerous practices. It seems that the boozy Captain Robert Everton would rather risk of the lives of everyone on board in order to drag his cargo through the rolling waves, but despite the protests of navigator Kelly Foster and engineer Steve Baker, he perseveres until his valuable cargo inevitably breaks free and sinks below the waves.
However, after taking refuge in the eye of the storm, dollar signs pop up in Everton’s eyes once more when they stumble across a seemingly deserted Akademik Vladislav Volkov and the greedy captain excitedly claims salvage rights that will more than make up for the losses he’s taken thus far. However, not long after the crew of the Sea Star start searching the huge ghost ship, they find that something else has laid claim on the boat first. Remember that alien intelligence that was beamed on board? Well it’s been fairly busy over the last seven days and has been creating whole new lifeforms by fusing together parts of the ship with the leftover remains of the Russian crew. Can Foster, Baker, Everton and the rest of an increasingly expendable crew mamage to hold off the bio-mechanical bastards before they can transfer its consciousness to a populated area?
While I could start things off on a negative note, it’s probably best that I let Jamie Lee Curtis have the floor as she hasn’t exactly been hesitant to put the boot in when dishing the dirt on this unloved, sci-fi, pot boiler. Simply put, Curtis described it as the worst film she ever made, which takes on some extra wallop when you remember she also appeared in the godawful Halloween: Resurrection only three years later. Now, while I would actually debate that Virus is as bad as a film that had Busta Rhymes take out Michael Myers with martial arts, it still proved to be so.ething of a massive disappointment upon release considering how promising the source material was. I never actually got a chance to read Chuck Pfarrer’s four issue miniseries, but it’s melding of similar themes to James Cameron’s Aliens and John Carpenter’s The Thing was enough to get me positively salivating when a movie was announced. However, you’re not far into Virus: The Movie until you realise that any smarts the comic may have had has been swept away in favour of repetitive scenes of either the cast yelling at each other constantly or endlessly creeping through corridors by torch light. Aside from that, there’s not a lot more that director John Bruno thinks to add as his extensive special effect background helps him have the flick look appropriately Aliens-ish, but leaves him utterly unable to make such an effortlessly cool concept gripping in any way shape or form.
The cast do what they can, but it’s the equivalent of trying to rollerskate up a mountain. Curtis does her best Ripley impersonation but appears to be screaming into the void; William Baldwin acts like any other Baldwin would in a similar situation and Joanna Pacula is on Russian accented exposition duty. This leaves the likes of Marshall Bell, Sherman Augustus and a Maori tattooed Cliff Curtis to do whatever they can with a script so thin, it could have been sponsored by Ozempic. However, this doesn’t seem to stop Donald Sutherland in the slightest who goes full salty sea dog and highjacks the entire movie with an Irish accent that has to be heard to believed and his character is so shifty and ready to sell out the human race on a dime, I’m surprised the actor wasn’t required to twirl and gigantic comedy mustache while he did so.
It’s a shame, because while Virus falls down on almost every conceivable level, it does boast some primo, techno-body horror that goes above and beyond. While the film starts small with hand-sized robo-spiders that scuttle all over the place, we soon graduate to fucked up, humanoid/robot zombies who clonk around the ship waving machine guns in order to do the alien AI’s bidding. What is most gratifying about these creatures is that for the most part, they are realised by full-sized animatronics delivered by Steve Johnson who had quite an unfortunate talent during the 90s for providing expansive effects for movies that didn’t really deserve them.
Still, while the lighting requires that you squint every so often to work out what exactly is going on, the jerky, Borg-like monsters are by far the best thing the movie has to offer thanks to the pace of the film simply making it impossible for it to breathe. However, among the unlikable characters and weird directorial choices (again, why does the AI feel the need to squeal like an oinker at the slaughterhouse?), I’m not entirely sure if Virus would have benefited from being either 20 minutes longer or 99 minutes shorter. Probably the latter if I’m being honest.
Packed with plenty of clanks, booms and some killer creature designs, Virus simply can’t make any aspect about its existence even remotely entertaining or scary – which is shocking when you realise that uber producer Gale Ann Hurd was attached who tends to have better luck when dealing with robot killing machines.
For this Virus, I guess you’d better take two nopes and call me in the morning.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 