The democratisation of independent filmmaking in recent decades has been driven by one overriding determinant: greater access, at reducing cost, to better and better technology. That progress has made it possible for writers and directors to produce and shoot digital format films, and distribute them through a growing number of streaming platforms, with only a fraction of the budget that their predecessors would have needed.
It’s something that’s reduced the barriers preventing new generations of cinematic talent from breaking into the industry and has led to the release of countless high-quality indie films. Movies that, in terms of artistic quality and cinematic literacy, can equal anything that the Hollywood production machine can produce only at an eye-watering cost.
But time and again, films come along which remind you that removing gatekeepers that previously controlled the filmmakers’ journey from script to screen comes at a cost. It means that terrible independent films – movies that would never have made their way through the approval process in earlier decades – also get made.
The Covid pandemic has encouraged several indie auteurs to believe that now is the perfect time to release movies tracking the devastation wreaked by a viral apocalypse. New Spanish production Lethal Virus (aka Covid 21: Lethal Virus, Contamination: Virus-21 and Lethal Contagion) is another entry in this horror niche, which imports the familiar beats of the cheapo zombie flick, and the motifs of the ‘one person who can save humanity’ storytelling, to complete its portrayal of plucky survivors in a world of the countless undead. The complete lack of originality is one thing; the abysmal delivery is something else entirely.
The premise of Lethal Virus is set out in the collage of news footage and spliced-together voiceovers of the energetic title sequence (the film’s most accomplished segment). Global warming has led to the thawing of permafrost in the Antarctic, which has unleashed a long-dormant virus that has quickly overwhelmed the world. The usual zombie tropes are in effect. The film opens when gruff, rugged ex-soldier Scott (Christian Stamm) is forced to flee from a zombie horde when raiding a shopping mall for supplies. Deep in the forest, a crack military unit is transferring single-minded, nerdy biochemist Allyson (Loretta Hope) to a medical facility in the belief that she will be able to distil a cure for zombification. When the unit is overwhelmed by a zombie surge, Allyson soon finds herself alone in the forest, before she’s rescued by Scott. As the pair throw in their lot together, two survivors from the military convoy are already following their trail.
The script, written by director Daniel H. Torrado and Nerea Bermúdez, is not particularly concerned with matters of characterisation. Scott’s back story (the reason he’s ‘like he is’) is shoehorned in during the third act, while the audience is asked to take Allyson’s claim to be the world’s best virologist on trust (which make later events even less convincing). For characters that are so thinly drawn, it’s surprising how unsympathetic both of them manage to be. This means that the film stands or falls on the quality of its action sequences. Early on, there are a few reasonably well-evoked images of Scott wandering through early morning city streets (a homage to 28 Days Later and others in the genre). But once the zombies turn up, the audience is subjected to badly choreographed, poorly framed and ineptly executed ‘teeth-tag’. The film crew rely on endless, exaggerated ‘shaky cam’ footage to make up for the lack of tension, thrills or decent prosthetic effects.
There’s not much more to recommend in the acting stakes, although the dire dialogue would be a dead-weight around the neck of more talented casts. The bewildering range of accents on display makes it difficult to develop any sense of place, and there’s nothing in the locations to ‘ground’ the drama, which only adds to the sense of disconnection. The film concludes without an ending, opting instead to pitch for a sequel it has done nothing to earn. Lethal Virus is both derivative and incompetently made.
Lethal Virus is available in the UK on Amazon Prime Video.
