INFECTION aka Kansen - 2004
Chris Davis International / Filmwerx, Inc.
Rated: N/A |
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Have you ever had this experience? You're flipping through the channels and you come across a movie. Weird stuff is happening so you watch. The weird stuff intrigues you, so much so that you stop watching because you want to see the movie from the beginning. The envelope arrives from Netflix a few days later and you pop the movie in the DVD player, looking forward to intriguing weird stuff with a good story wrapped around it. Hopefully.
INFECTION was directed by Masayuki Ochiai (HYPNOSIS, PARASITE EVE) and written by Mr. Ochiai and Ryoichi Kimizuka (MY LOVER IS A SNIPER, PARASITE EVE). The movie begins with the voice over of a paramedic calling from an ambulance, asking what hospital he should go to. He is transporting an unconscious man with a rapidly spreading black rash.
We cut to Central Hospital and we see that this is a bad place to get sick. An unattended old man gets a broken ankle trying to get out of bed. A nurse with shaky hands makes attempt after attempt to draw blood from a helpless patient wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. Supplies are low and many nurses have quit. Dr. Uozomi (Masanobu Takashima: GODZILLA: FINAL WARS) argues with his ex-wife over the phone and loses which explains his "this is all pointless" attitude when he talks to Dr. Akiba (Koichi Sato: AEGIS, WHITEOUT, THE FIVE). As they're talking, the paramedic searching for an ER that will accept "the man with the black rash" is heard over the radio. One of the doctors reaches for the radio and turns it down.
The patient wrapped in bandages takes a turn for the worse and the full force of this apathetic hospital are brought to bear. The poor guy dies through their combined incompetence and Uozomi and Akiba, along with the two nurses present, decide on a little cover-up to avoid embarrassing accusations.
As if all that lying wasn't stressful enough, the ambulance finally shows up and drops off the infected patient in spite of Uozomi's protests. The doctors are shocked by what they see and I probably would have been too but they never actually showed the patient with the black rash. What we do see is the horrified looks on everyone's faces and the green ooze dripping off the table.
The very serious Dr. Akai (Shiro Sano: THE BIG SPOOK WAR, THE PRINCESS BLADE) is not horrified. He's fascinated and convinced that they're seeing some strange new parasite and if they can identify it they'll all be famous. Nobody wants anything to do with it at first until they discover Dr. Akai was taking a nap in the room next door when they hatched their cover-up. What does he know?
What he doesn't seem to know is the most basic medical procedures (or the most basic common sense) regarding a fungus that makes the flesh eating bacteria look like athlete's foot. The place should have been instantly quarantined and sterilized and surrounded by the Japanese equivalent of the CDC. But for these guys, even when the infection spreads and people start dissolving and then really weird stuff happens, they just keep running around the building rather than running for their lives.
What is happening, exactly? It's at this point that I'd normally hit you with a SCIENCE MOMENT about parasites and fungi (fascinating stuff, believe me). But this movie takes what I think is a turn into ghost story territory which means it's fantasy and all the laws of science are repealed. I think it becomes a ghost story because we see a strange child in a mask and a swing on a playground swinging by itself. But to be honest I'm not really sure.
And that's not good. I get enough confusion from real life – I don't need it from the movies. There are some cool scenes and watching the disintegration of this bad hospital was fascinating at first. But the last third of the film is a bigger mess than the dissolving patients. I give INFECTION two shriek girls.
This review
copyright 2006 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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