There’s something going around that’s making people sick
Main Cast: Sophia Black-D’Elia, Lio Tipton
Directors: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
It was getting late, but I had time for one more movie if I picked quick so, on a whim, I chose 2016’s VIRAL because it was under 90 minutes. Good pick.
Written by Christopher Landon and Barbara Marshall and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, VIRAL is a typical end of the world through virus story. This time it’s worms. They multiply and take over a person, making them ravenously hungry to the point it doesn’t matter what they’re eating, or who.
Stacey (Lio Tipton, WARM BODIES) and Emma (Sofia Black-D’Elia) are new in town, and I immediately thought I recognized this neighborhood, and I’m pretty sure the last time I was here, they left the bodies and only moved the headstones, but that was a long time ago and I could be wrong.
Emma is having a hard time adjusting while Stacey has fit right in. Their scientist father is now teaching high school while their mother is out of town on a job, and just as the quarantine hits, Dad is at the airport picking up Mom. But now they can’t get back, leaving Stacey and Emma home alone in the middle of a world-ending pandemic. And everyone they know are high schoolers, those paragons of good judgment and rational thinking.
I enjoyed VIRAL more than I expected to and probably more than I should have, but Black-D’Elia and Tipton inhabit their characters fully, and the writers show us Emma’s progression from quiet wallflower to the girl who takes charge and makes things happen.
The effects were gross, as they were meant to be, and the whole thing, although made in 2015 and released a year later—4 years before the world caught up to it—felt very prescient, although in this one the army drops care packages including flares and MREs for everyone trapped in their homes, and I don’t remember anything like that in the real life 2020.
VIRAL is a zombie movie without the zombies—at least not the kind we’re used to. Throw in a little The Last of Us with a small dash of A Quiet Place and you’re getting warmer.
As it got closer and closer to when I should really be getting to bed, I only checked the run time once, and only to see how much more time I got to spend in this world. VIRAL isn’t the greatest example of this genre, nor was it going to set the world on fire; it’s a small story in a big world that’s falling apart. The only hint we get of the larger world beyond the walls of Stacey and Emma’s house is from newscasts and the occasional column of smoke rising in the distance. At its heart, though, this is the story of THESE two characters and their relationship to one another as they switch roles.
I really enjoyed it. I don’t think I’d buy the DVD unless it was super cheap, and even then I probably wouldn’t watch it alone again, but I can see myself showing it to my wife one lazy Saturday when we’ve got nothing to do. Again, not the best thing ever, but definitely worth a viewing.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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