Netflix Review: What We Become (2016)

"Infection Apocalypse: Family Style."

When it comes to newer Euro Horror movies, like this one, for instance, I tend to dig them more than most of their American counterparts for some reason.

I don't know what it is that makes the average Euro Horror flick seem "better" than the average American effort, but I never feel the need to bash on them when they're lacking as much as I do the flicks that come out of the U.S.

Maybe it's a cultural thing. Maybe the average Euro genre movie is made with more love and skill. Or maybe I'm just crazy. I don't know.

Whatever the reason is for my recent Euro Horror bias, What We Become is a movie that I really enjoyed a lot, even though I know that it's nothing new or exciting.

As a sudden viral sickness sweeps through their Danish town, a family of four must band together to face a sweeping viral contagion that threatens to destroy them all! Of course none of them make smart decisions at all, which is par for the course for this type of film, but hey, it's hard to keep your head as viral zombie apocalypse is unfolding all around you.

WHATEVER THOSE MASKED GUYS TELL YOU TO DO, DO EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE!

Mom and Dad try their best to keep their kids safe, but with the government forcing them to stay in their house under penalty of death, and with strangers showing up to complicate matters in various ways, there's not much they can really do.

THEY'RE MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE INFECTED THAT ARE ROAMING THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Son Gustav at least has the hot neighbor chick to keep him occupied. Sure, maybe he would spy on her from across the street while she was changing clothes, but it's basically the end of the world, so it's not like she's going to find a better boyfriend than him anyway. And then there's adorable daughter Maj and her damned rabbit, which you just know is going to make her do something stupid which will no doubt doom them all.

FORGET THE RABBIT, KID. STAY INSIDE!

What We Become was a solid infected flick that felt a lot like the AMC show, Fear the Walking Dead in that it shows us the start of the "Zombie Apocalypse" by way of the plight of an everyday ordinary family, and their neighbors who must band together to survive. It's more of a containment movie really, as most of it involves a mysterious sickness sweeping through town, the military moving in and quarantining everyone, and then everything going to hell in a hand basket from there.

It's well-made, and it has some pretty intense infected thrills, but they come a bit too late in the movie to make it truly exciting overall. It really felt like just as the movie got going, it ended. And that ending was a fairly bleak one, with a final shot that left us wanting to see more.

SHE'S HAD BETTER DAYS.

You get some typical Infected messiness throughout this one, but it's not overtly gory.

THAT INFECTED DUDE KINDA LOOKS LIKE JOHN SNOW.

No nudity in this one, but Marie Hammer Boda sure does look good in her skivvies.

SASSY.

For a newer Infected flick, What We Become is a solid little effort that gets a lot right, even if it does little more than re-tread familiar ground. It's like eating a decent pizza even though you know that you've had better; it's still pretty tasty, because it's pizza, and you like pizza. So, yum. But you've had better.

It's well worth your time to watch this one if you've got Netflix, and if not, then you could do way worse than to rent it or buy the Blu-ray, if you need an infected fix.

B

What We Become is available now on VOD and Blu-ray.

Marie Hammer Boda is in this. She's kinda like the Danish Anna Paquin.

VOD Review: Viral (2016)

"This is one movie that really wormed its way into our hearts."

(aka Worm Flu.)
Release Date: August 2nd.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Christopher Landon.
Directed by: Henry Joost & Ariel Shulman.
Starring: Sophia Black-D'Elia, Analeigh Tipton, Travis Tope, Machine Gun Kelly, and Michael Kelly.

We're usually pretty skeptical when a new Blumhouse movie goes the Direct-to-VOD route, because let's be honest, a lot of their smaller flicks tend not to be so great. We were happily surprised to find though,that Viral was an above-average release for them. In fact, if they could only manage to make their output this satisfying on a regular basis, we'd have nothing to bitch about anymore when it comes to Blumhouse.

Emma and Stacey are sisters, and average teenagers in a small town, just trying to navigate their way through High School life. Emma is sweet and innocent, and Stacey is wild and rebellious, which means that they clash, which makes their already troubled home life (their parents may be splitsville) even more chaotic.

DEFINITELY OPPOSITES.

To make things even worse, a worm parasite begins infecting people and spreading across the country, turning the infected into mindless, aggressive creatures, which causes the country to break down. Cell phone signals fail, the power goes off, travelers are stranded far from home, and eventually, the Army movies in to declare martial law and quarantine the small town in which Emma and Stacey live.

BUT NO PARASITE CAN STOP TRUE LOVE.

With their parents kept out of town by the quarantine (for reasons), the sisters are forced to survive on their own. At first, Stacey looks at it like a time to party with no parental supervision, but it soon becomes clear that those days are gone, and that they're all in grave danger. Vomity, wormy danger.

Pandemic panic ensues.

SO YOU ENJOYED THE PARTY THEN? GOOD.

Viral is a different kind of Infected movie that focuses more on the dramatic impact of the ensuing Apocalypse, rather than just the usual "run, hide, die" aspects of such efforts. The movie is still plenty intense at times, and the feeling of doom associated with most pandemic movies like this is ever-present, but much like Into the Forest, the focus here is on how two young sisters deal with the outbreak and their quarantine, which made it both refreshing, and emotionally impactful.

On the technical side of things, Viral does not look like a Direct-to-VOD movie at all. Not only is it solidly written and directed, but the camerawork is clean and makes things look like they cost way more than the Indie budget that they had to work with.

We honestly thought that Analeigh Tipton was Aubrey Plaza when we saw the trailer for Viral, because they could be sisters. She's her own person though, and she did a hell of a job in this one. Her character had the most to do, and went through way more of a dramatic story arc than Sophia Black-D'Elia's did, and she was impressive. They both were.

THOSE INFECTED ARE VERY PUSHY.

What was with the infected and their little meeting? Was it some sort of hive-mind recharge session or something? If there's one thing about this movie that didn't wow us, it's that the infected had a fairly small presence, and when we did see them, we weren't sure what they were all about.

A PRAYER CIRCLE?

When your Dad tells you no boys in the house, there's a reason for it, and you listen!

Also, why would you go to a house party when your town in under viral quarantine? Don't you think that if there's a sickness moving from person to person, that being in a tight space with a ton of other people might not be the best idea?

DUMMIES.

Plenty of bloody spewing in this one.

WHY SO SERIOUS?

Nope.

FOR SHAME...

A viral pandemic can happen at any time, and if it ever does, it's going to be bloody, wormy, and messy. Plan accordingly.

WELL, SHIT.

More of a character study and sisterly relationship drama (at least in its latter half) than it was an all-out Horror flick, Viral was a solid Infection movie that allowed us to feel the ravages of a deadly pandemic on a smaller, more intimate scale. They could have ramped up the Horror a bit, but as it stands, this movie entertained us, and made us like its characters enough to be genuinely afraid for them.

It's definitely worthy of a rental.

B

Viral is available now on VOD.

Analeigh Tipton is now one of our favorite young actresses, and Sophia Black-D'Elia isn't so bad either.

VOD Review:: Summer Camp (2016)

"Crystal Lake, this ain't."

Don't let the above blurb give you the wrong impression; Summer Camp isn't a bad movie. It's a movie with a great premise and an exciting twist that was poorly written in places, and it's a bit too jumbled and confused throughout, but it's not "bad."

It's just with a title like Summer Camp, the first thing that comes to mind are visions of Friday the 13th, The Burning, or Sleepaway Camp, and this movie is not quite on their level. 

*If you don't want the movie spoiled for you, do not read any further.

Summer Camp is the story of three young twenty-something Americans who are hired to work at a remote Summer Camp in Spain, to teach the local children English. In the opening scene we're told via news report that they went missing, and local authorities believe that they will never be seen again. The rest of the movie takes past in a flashback of the day before the camp is set to open, where we get to see just what happened to them. 

YEP, THESE ARE THE MISSING THREE.

Before the kids arrive at the camp, our unlucky trio, along with a local Spanish dude, decide to get to know one another by doing trust exercises that involve them blindfolding and chasing each other through the woods. There's plenty of other things to do around the creepy old camp (as it's pretty run down), but they never really get to that stuff, because before they can, some sort of rage-inducing virus takes a hold of them, causing them to savagely turn on each other.

A desperate and challenging attempt at survival ensues. 

THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FRIENDS!

I won't spoil he twists that the plot undergoes in this section, as the movie really does do the whole Infected thing in a very different way, so why ruin it. I will ruin it all below though, so be warned.

THE SYMPATHETIC ONE.

Summer Camp was an energetic and intense movie, if a somewhat underwritten one.

The premise of the movie, which involves people becoming infected, but only for a short time, was a pretty genius stroke; sure, go ahead and kill your friend to stay alive, after all, they're infected monsters who want to tear you apart with their bare hands. Remember though, that shit will wear off in a while, and then they'll be dead for nothing, and you'll be a murderer.

If nothing else, this movie put a great spin on an old, overused trope.

THAT IS THE FACE OF REGRET.

The main problem that we had with Summer Camp is that as fresh of an idea as it is, it's too quick-cut for its own good. I'm all for quick pacing, and some intense action, but this movie could have used a bit of restraint in both of those areas. Someone get infected, goes wild with rage, chases the others around trying to cave their heads in, then they calm down, then the infection kicks in on someone else, and the whole thing repeats. That's to be expected, as Summer Camp is the baby of Alberto Marini and Jaume Balaguero, both of whom brought us the [REC] series, but this one doesn't ever reach the level of terror that those films, at least most of them, achieved.

A lot of the movie is very dark too, so it's not easy to see what's going on in some scenes.... which is made worse by the shaky cam, which is ever present in this one, and even shakier than it is in most movies.

All of that would be easy enough to put up with if we actually cared about the characters. The beginning of the movie is supposed to be an introduction to them, but served only annoy and confound. The actors did as good of a job here as they could have, given the material they had to work with, but it was rough-going early on, dialogue and acting-wise. Once things kicked into gear though, Maiara Walsh's character was basically the only one we ended up really liking. We love us some Jocelin Donahue, but man was her character ever a selfish bitch.

It was annoying at times, fun at times, and pretty intense throughout, but in a really uneven way. The scene at the end was great though, and we would have loved to see more of the movie be about that.

50 SHADES OF FOREST GREEN.

There are some gory bits throughout this one involving blood and some mysterious black goo, but the movie is so dark and shaky that we don't get to see a lot of it on-screen. 

THAT DOG SAW IT THOUGH. HE SAW EVERYTHING.

Nope.

SIGH...

Overall, Summer Camp is a clever movie that puts an interesting twist on the standard Infected storyline, but it suffers from some mediocre writing (especially early on), and visuals that are confused, really dark, and very shaky.

It's a half-and-half kind of movie for us, and one that you might want to check out if you don't need your fright flicks to be perfect. We're just picky.

C

Summer Camp is available on VOD, and in limited theaters, now.

The ever-lovely Jocelin Donahue and her pal Maiara Walsh.