Virus

Virus (1999)
Cert. 18

Spoilers ahead. This is one of those underrated horror/sci fi films that slips under the radar. A fairly decent cast led by Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland and William Baldwin, I remember seeing this on pay-per-view back in '99 and I remember it being quite scary, in a freaky sort of way. The second time I watched it was a few years later and I was half-asleep, and to my sleepy-sleepy brain it seemed very freaky-weird. Having just seen it again after probably almost a decade, it was only slightly freaky. But fairly scary. It achieves this mainly due to the atmosphere of dread - a small group of people, trapped on a boat in the middle of a fierce storm with some sort of alien intelligence which is never properly explained (just the way we like it) other than it being hell-bent on destroying them... Worse than that though - it wants to use their bodies to splice with cybernetic components to create grisly and graphic monsters of half-flesh and half robot. One of them seemed like a direct Borg rip off from Star Trek, mind, but we'll forgive them that (this time!) Donald Sutherland is a rather menacing, foreboding and grim character who seems like he's got nothing left to lose and it's no surprise when he actually voluntarily lets the alien menace take him and do whatever... All in all this is a good little film, not too long, not too short - pretty good action all the way through, keeps on moving, and I'd recommend it.

Language: Some bad words, but totally understandable considering what's happening
Sex: No
Violence/Gore: Yeah, quite a lot, quite graphic at times, brains 'n guts 'n stuff
Atmosphere: Dark, hopeless, scary

8/10