- Directed by Rob Jabbaz
- Written by Rob Jabbaz
- Stars Berant Zhu, Regina Lei, Ying-Ru Chen
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUR1DWh7eLs
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Rated G for general audiences. Just kidding. This one is over the top in blood, violence, and sexual situations. Very inventively so. Fast, crazy, smart zombies are probably the worst and this movie is full of them. Really excellent.
Synopsis
We start out in Taiwan, with a young couple, Jim and Kat, waking up together. They’re planning on taking a vacation trip next week, but he can’t go, as he has to work.
Jim watches a YouTube video with a guy being interviewed about the “Alvin Virus.” People say that it’s no worse than the flu, but experts are concerned about it mutating into something else. It’s closely related to rabies, and it wouldn’t take much to go over the edge, but people are politicizing the disease.
Jim sees a bloody old woman standing on the roof of the building next door, but Kim doesn’t see it. Next door neighbor, Mr. Lin says he has a cold. Jim drives Kat to the train station on his scooter, and everything looks very normal— except for a very bloody situation involving the police, ambulance, and dead bodies.
Jim stops off at a local breakfast place. They talk about how the pandemic is killing the housing market. That old woman Jim saw earlier shambles into the place, and everyone notices her. She spits in a man’s face and then pours boiling cooking oil on the proprietor. Almost immediately, others in the restaurant start attacking each other, so Jim gets out of there quickly. People chase Jim all the way home.
The nice Mr. Lin tries to kill Jim with hedge clippers, and Jim figures out what’s going on real fast— especially after he loses fingers. He goes back outside to get Kat, and sees that it’s a full-blown zombie apocalypse all of a sudden, except these “zombies” are alive, smart, and very sadistic- they use guns and weapons too.
Meanwhile, Kat is on the train, The man sitting next to her asks about the book she’s reading. The businessman is a little too friendly, and she suggests that he back off a bit and stop being creepy. The man gets upset and starts talking to himself, so Kat gives her seat to another passenger. A minute later, some random guy on the train stabs another one, and then within seconds, everyone on the train is infected and fighting. The businessman is infected as well, and he pokes out the eye of the girl next to Kat. The train stops, and everyone gets off.
Kat runs off, helping Molly, the girl who just lost her eye. The businessman, for some reason, is still following them. He taunts them from down the hallway— yes, he can still speak. He laughs and runs after them. They run into a big guy who tries to help, and the businessman bites his nose off. He winks at the girls as he kills the helpful stranger. They get away, but it’s clear the businessman isn’t done yet.
Elsewhere, Jin finds bodies everywhere. He is trying to get to Kat’s work, not realizing she never made it there. He stops to do a little Duct-tape-first-aid on his two missing fingers. He scares off a group of infectec who are attacking a man, but the man doesn’t want to be saved.
Kat and Molly make it to the hospital. The ER has been overrun, and the police have been very busy. There’s a military address on TV, and they explain that the disease is serious, and so far, the scientists haven’t found a solution. The President comes on and gives a standard pep talk. The general goes berserk and kills the President right then on air— with a grenade.
Kat sees the businessman waiting for her outside. He breaks the window and lets the other crazies in. He goes looking for Kat but finds Molly; he does things in her eye socket as she screams.
Jim gets a message from Kat saying she’s at the hospital now. Jin has a kind of vision, but he shakes it off. Is he infected?
The businessman continues to follow Kat, and she beats him over the head with a fire extinguisher until there’s not much left of him. She meets up with a guy in a hazmat suit who orders her to cuff herself to a pipe and shower in disinfectant, which she does. He’s a virologist, Dr. Wong, and he says he tried to warn people that the Alvin virus would mutate.
Jim arrives at the hospital and starts his search. Dr. Wong injects Kat with the virus to see if she’s immune or not. He also injected all the babies in the maternity ward with the virus to see if they were immune; they weren’t. He gets a text that a helicopter will be landing on the roof for him in five minutes. They leave the safe room, and Wong is almost immediately attacked.
Kat helps Wong walk to the roof, but Jim shows up, clearly infected. He kills Wong as Kat runs away. Wong laughs about killing babies as he dies himself. Jim talks about all the things he’d like to do to Kat, but they’re separated by a locked door. She runs up to the roof to the helicopter and we hear gunfire up there.
She doesn’t get away.
Commentary
This was very creative, to say the least. It’s exceptionally bloody, and as much as I like gore shots, there’s just too much blood to be realistic.
There’s no parallels here with any other pandemics that have been reported as fake news. Nope, none at all.
It’s essentially a zombie movie, but the zombies here aren’t dead, just infected. I’m reminded immediately of “The Crazies” which we reviewed only recently. The disease just seems to make people evil, sadistic, and mean; otherwise, they seem to have all their faculties. Some of them are very creative.
It’s good. If you liked “Train to Busan(https://www.horrorguys.com/train-to-busan-2016-review/)” and “The Crazies(https://www.horrorguys.com/the-crazies-2010/),” you’ll love this one.