I was gung-ho for “Virus” in 1998; I gobbled up the 1992 comic series by Chuck Pfarrer (who co-writes the screenplay), and I recall the novelization by S.D. Perry being a cracking good read. I devoured the articles and photos in Fangoria and Starlog.
Then in 1999 it finally hit theaters – as one of those classic January sci-fi discards — and it made my honorable mentions even in that great year of cinema.
Swamped by formula
Well, our tastes change as we get older. On this rewatch, I found director John Bruno’s film bogged down by its own formula. “Virus” is “The Thing” by way of “Terminator’s” Skynet, with no surprises beyond that.
“Virus” (1999)
Director: John Bruno
Writers: Dennis Feldman (screenplay), Chuck Pfarrer (comic book)
Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin
You have to have the mind of a collector who wants to see all the slick B-level “Alien” knockoffs – this one being “ ‘Alien’ on an ocean vessel via space lightning” – in order to get excited about such a cliché-fest, and I was such a completist in 1999. (I didn’t go so far to buy the action figures, although I did stare at them in the toy aisle.)
Here we can collect not only another alien entity, and another setting, but also the latest versions of the Horror Film Cross-Section of Humanity. Clambering aboard the mysteriously derelict Russian science vessel are the scared guy (Marshall Bell’s Woods), the tough guy (Cliff Curtis’ Hiko), the unpredictable guy (Sherman Augustus’ Richie), the guy everyone likes (Julio Oscar Mechoso’s Squeaky), the guy who doesn’t take any of this seriously until it’s too late (Donald Sutherland’s Captain Everton) and the outsider who maybe can’t be trusted although viewers know she can be (Joanna Pacula’s lone Russian survivor Nadia).
And of course there’s the Final Girl and Final Guy who are destined to be a couple although neither of them realize it (Jamie Lee Curtis’ Kit Foster and William Baldwin’s Steve Baker).
Bad enough to be good?
As strikingly basic as “Virus” is, it draws different responses. Jamie Lee Curtis thinks it’s the worst thing she’s been in. My pal Mike thinks it’s a campy case of “so bad it’s good,” with a weird go-for-broke charm via its attempts to overcome a cheap budget.
He points to what he claims is an obvious shot of a ship model in a bathtub, which I couldn’t find on my relatively small TV when actively seeking it out. I see “Virus” as simply mediocre – hurt by its lack of surprises, boosted by creepy gore effects. Because of the soft spot I hold for it, I rate it a notch above average.
Because of its title, “Virus” might see a spike in viewings in 2020, but those viewers won’t find much insight into our coronavirus pandemic. Still, give Pfarrer and co-writer Dennis Feldman this much credit: The movie plays with three different definitions of “virus.”
In the cheesy thematic gotcha moment, the alien lightning – which has quickly absorbed everything on the internet and the vessel’s intranet — labels humans as a virus that needs to be eliminated for the larger organism (the Earth) to survive.
Descent of the machines
The second meaning is “computer virus,” although folks with computer knowledge will of course pick that apart. It’s more of a metaphor for a computer virus; it’s actually sentient electricity that uses computers, cables, wires and machine parts – combining them with “spare parts” from humans – to create bodies for itself. It’s Skynet without the Pentagon’s budget.
And the third meaning is a virus that can spread into a pandemic – in the movie, it’s not biological, it’s thrift-store Terminators, but you’ll be just as dead. The more conscientious members of the American crew that boards the Russian ship realize they must blow it up before it reaches the island with a British naval station. Otherwise the murderous alien intelligence will spread like we’ve seen coronavirus do this year.
The shots of machine/human corpse hybrids are creepy (although the ones that are just machines are rather cute), but “Virus” isn’t scary overall. Part of the problem is that we’ve seen this all before.
Also, the film moves too fast; the time between a human encountering the machine intelligence and popping up again as a mechanized corpse is brisk (although I’m not complaining about the tight 99-minute runtime). Fear needs to marinate, but this is a microwaved frozen dinner version of horror.
Are machines really scary?
The biggest issue might be that the very idea of machine intelligence isn’t scary. If it was, the “Terminator” films would be labeled horror. Many of us work daily with computers that we sometimes can’t trust to boot up properly, and programs that crash or run slower than our speed of thought and typing.
Computers are amazing tools, but they fall short of human intelligence. They are human helpers. And we’ve already seen that when humans and machines meld, the result is positive, such as a robotic prosthetic arm. Entertainment can be made from the “fear of machines,” but it’s gonna lean toward shlock rather than something with immediate resonance.
Indeed, when the lightning intelligence immediately sets to work creating itself in man’s image, we know there’s nothing to be scared of. There’s plenty to be grossed out by in “Virus,” but the threat is even less than that of a modern computer virus.