(2004/JAPAN)
REVIEWED BY - JEREMY WEBSTER
DIRECTED BY - MASAYUKI OCHIAI
CAST - MICHIKO HADA, MARI HOSHINO, TAE KIMURA, YOKO MAKI, KAHO MINAMI, MORO
MOROOKA, SHIRO SANO, KOICHI SATO, MASANOBU TAKASHIMA
SOURCE - LION'S GATE HOME ENTERTAINMENT (US) NTSC R1 DVD (2005)
Just when the Japanese horror industry seems to have dead-ended in an endless stream of re-workings of *Ringu*, *Ju-On*, and *Dark Water*, along comes a direct-to-DVD release named *Infection*. This 2004 Japanese horror film is distributed in a sadly extras-free, barebones release, but don't let that fool you. I picked it up as a blind buy, and I'm VERY glad I did. The movie centers on a number of stressed-out doctors and nurses in an under funded, run-down Japanese hospital. Somewhere in the city, an ambulance is calling over the radio channels, begging for some hospital - ANY hospital - to admit its critical-condition, rash-covered patient. But this hospital staff isn't concerned with that. Their paychecks haven't arrived. They're running out of supplies. Most of the staff is, to put it bluntly, inept when it comes to their duties.
Things take an even more dire turn for our motley crew of medical morons when a comatose patient with burns over 70% of his body dies on them. The staff attempt resuscitation only to have one simple mistake result in the patient's death. The staff works out a way to cover up the "malpractice" fatality only to discover that the ambulance that has been careening around has dropped off its patient... a man who seems to be liquefying into green sludge from the inside out... Soon, some members of the staff begin exhibiting odd symptoms of their own, as well as an obsession with things that have come in contact with the infected patient. The infection doesn't just affect the body, it infiltrates the mind as well… and it's spreading…
In one of the movie's more disturbing scenes, an obviously mentally unbalanced nurse goes digging in a biohazard waste bin full of supplies that had been used on the infected patient. She smiles happily as she pulls out masses of used, filthy tubing and I.V.'s. I.V. catheters and needles have jabbed her in the hands during her "salvage operation," yet she seems totally oblivious to the wounds as she carries the mass toward the sterilizer… cringe worthy stuff indeed.
*Infection* is a very tense, disturbing film. It's not as gory as it COULD be, but what director Masayuki Ochiai and his crew HAVE done is marvelously effective. Between the biological and pseudo-supernatural horrors, there's a pretty solid base of REAL medical horrors underpinning the plot to give it even more power. The hospital itself, be it a location or a set, is incredibly well done. The place just EXHUDES awfulness and unsterility with its filth, water spots, and rust. It's dingy, it's dirty, and it seems... yes, diseased. Considering the staff itself, it's a perfect representation - if the hospital were an organism, it WOULD be sick - because the staff, the very people that make the place function, are inept and reprehensible.
Good acting, some great, disturbing effects work, and a mix between real medical nastiness and fictional horror elements come together to make this little Japanese production tick. I'd give it a perfect score if the filmmakers had just found a clearer ending for it. The final ten minutes of this movie are terribly confusing, and I had to watch the movie twice just to come up with a sound theory for what happened in its climax. Even with its Rubik's Cube of an ending, though, *Infection* still stands well apart from the endless stream of vengeful, unstoppable female revenants with long black hair that are continually invading our shores these days on DVD, and
it is definitely a welcome change. My biggest disappointment in this release is the lack of extras, but it's still definitely worth your time.
STORY/FILM-3.5 BITCH SLAPS
PICTURE-4 BITCH SLAPS
AUDIO-4 BITCH SLAPS
EXTRAS-1 BITCH SLAP
OVERALL DVD-3.0 BITCH SLAPS
