Director: Jonny Campbell
Year: 2026
Country: USA/France/United Kingdom/Italy/Monaco
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Body-Horror
Plot:
Taking a job for the night, a security guard at a government storage facility and his partner become curious about exploring what’s stored there and try to investigate what’s inside, eventually uncovering a rapidly spreading fungal virus and must rely on other agents to help contain it.
Review:
This was a solid enough and intriguing genre effort. Among the better elements to be had with this one is the incredibly fun setup for what amounts to a rather simple story of an alien invasion taking over a small town. The idea of the alien being coming from a series of space station experiments taking place decades ago and thought to have been lost over the intervening years involving a fungus from space that is shown to be adaptable and extremely dangerous for humanity with the way it spreads and infects others to continue spreading is a worthwhile way to get this going, especially with the various organizations looking to make sure it stays out of the public. That keeps going nicely through the exploration of the facility and the various attempts at bringing everything together, featuring the military regulations in place as well as the other protocols shown to be of use at the location while they’re working, creating a rather solid time here.
This becomes all the more prominent once the whole thing turns into a race to stop the contamination from spreading, as the scenes involving the guards trying to come to terms with everything are rather fun. The search throughout the basement and the various discoveries made there that end up releasing the full extent of the fungal virus on others serve to introduce a lot of fun elements here, especially with the infection spreading through possession-like details where it takes over others and controls them. That gives this plenty of solid action and plenty of enjoyable moments here, trying to make sense of the wholly unpredictable situation they’re in, as the animals and humans they encounter that become involved in this offer up plenty of likable elements and generally cheesy encounters, especially once the agents get involved with trying to hold this back from escaping. Given that there’s a lot of solid gore on top of these other elements, there’s plenty to like overall here.
There are some drawbacks here that bring this down. The biggest drawback to the film is the inclusion of the biker gang robbing the facility that gets introduced at around the hour mark for no real reason, especially when it becomes immensely obvious that the whole thing is designed to introduce a body count for the fungus to infect. The whole thing is introduced so late that we barely get to know who they are or what they’re looking to steal, and manage to serve no singular purpose in being there, merely to get infected by the fungus and possessed to help denote how powerful the disease is. It just makes for a rather troubling situation that doesn’t need to be there, especially under the conditions that it does. The other slight issue here is the silly attitude and approach taken here that is supposed to be funny yet hardly ever gets to that point, often feeling out of place in the scenario and quite at odds with how it all comes together, as these are what bring this down.
Overview: ****/5
A rather fun and enjoyable genre effort, there’s a lot more to like here than expected, and manage to hold this one up over a few slight flaws present that keep this one down just slightly. Those with an appreciation for the approach taken here, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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