Patient Zero

In spite of the subgenre’s oversaturation over the past couple decades, I’m still a sucker for a well-done zombie flick.  I’m also, as you might remember, a sucker for Natalie Dormer.  So imagine my glee when I found a new zombie flick with Ms. Dormer in it!  Let’s go, thought I.

Ah, but wait, I jumped the gun a bit here.  This isn’t technically a zombie movie.  I mean, it once was:  Back in its original inception, the script was definitely centered around zombies, but rewrites over the course of a few years, while the film’s production was held up, eventually changed the zombies into people infected by a sort of super-rabies.  I guess we’re kinda in some Quarantine territory then.  Even still.  But more on this later.

Our story is set inside a missile silo that is currently a stronghold for the uninfected.  A scientist is working with her compatriots, some military guards, and a man who resisted infection and can speak the infecteds’ language are working toward finding patient zero of the outbreak that has thus far infected billions, so that a cure for the infection can be found.  They interrogate captured infecteds, keeping them at bay with brute force and music (which apparently bothers them).  Meanwhile, our uninfected windtalker (I guess we can use his name, Morgan) is working with his infected wife to see if she can be turned back.  Things, as you might imagine, go sideways, causing hijinx to ensue.

The acting here runs the full gamut:  Dormer is fine and fairly posh as the scientist, even though she’s given little to do, and Matt Smith is solid as well as Morgan, despite an awkward American accent (especially weak and odd in his voice-overs), especially in a role that’s not all that doofy.  Stanley Tucci rocks, as per usual, as an infected who’s decidedly more together and with-it than his more physical brethren. Most of the remaining cast is just kinda there, with little to do and nothing to get across to us.  On the bad end of things is Clive Standen, who plays a colonel in charge of the science team’s protection with major histrionics, a stereotypical unredeemable asshat who acts over-the-top at all times.  At one point, he even assails the scientists with “What good is all your research if you can’t protect anyone or bring them back?”  One would think he’d be smart enough to know that said research is, y’know, working toward the cure he speaks of, but hey, what do I know, eh?

His attitude, though, is just a symptom of the film’s most glaring issue, its script.  Believe it or not, it was a member of the 2013 Black List (the list of, basically, the best as-yet-unproduced scripts) and sparked a bidding war between several studios.  This was, of course, back when it was still an actual zombie movie.  What we’ve got here, after a couple years of being shelved by Sony and dribbled out as a VOD release, is a highly flawed screenplay that just doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself.  The shift from zombies to super-rabid people isn’t quite finished, and the elements that survived the rewrites don’t fit with infected people.  Having an intelligent and intelligible zombie that can clearly think and reason and whatnot is actually interesting, something extraordinary, but the concept doesn’t work when the person in question is just suffering from super-rabies, which seems to just make people really violent.  Indeed, the “violence as sustenance” angle is played up in this film, but it doesn’t make as much sense as zombies hungering for flesh, especially when these uber-violent infecteds’ initial move is to bite their prey’s jugular.  Things are made even worse when we’re told Smith speaks their language, but we don’t see much of this language on its own; sure, we’re given a couple glimpses of Tucci and his cohorts screeching a bit, but it never sounds like a language, per se, just a clarion call.  Instead, we see Matt Smith chatting them up, all the while we understand their English perfectly.  At one point, I realized that the cell he interrogates the infecteds in isn’t sound-proof, but rather the surrounding observing scientists just couldn’t understand the infecteds, but this didn’t come to me until near the end.  We are never given the pivotal bits where we get, say, some subtitled infected speak or even just a few lines we don’t understand.  And then there’s Tucci’s spiel about the infection being a “cure” for mankind of some sort, which is a concept that’s not only more tired than an elderly man after a marathon, but it also doesn’t really make any sense here:  Who or what is “curing” mankind?  To what end?  How is a slightly more violent humanity better than the normal model?

And this weak scripting is exacerbated by some similarly weak filmmaking, as well.  While the green- and orange-heavy color palette works for the subterranean setting, what with the surrounding earth tones and artificial lighting, when coupled with plenty of handicam close-ups it also gives off a sort of cheap feel to the proceedings, as if we were seeing a better-casted remake of Cabin Fever 3.  The editing is basic and efficient to a fault, occasionally leaving out some much-needed visual connective tissue.  For example, a scene in the facility’s morgue turns into an ambush of sorts by Tucci, who evades the soldiers like a ninja while he picks them off.  Thing is, the way it’s shot and edited, we can’t tell how the soldiers lose sight of him in such a small room.  It’s just confusing and laughable, rather than tense.  Indeed, there is a distinct lack of tension and fear throughout the film, things welcome in an enclosed zombie infestation, mostly due to a script that doesn’t set up the climax well at all and editing and camera work that doesn’t present the infecteds as all that threatening.  I mean, think about how terrifying the zombies from 28 Days Later were, as they were seen to be extremely quick and strong.  The infecteds here, on the other hand, just look like angry athletic folks who somehow overpower armed soldiers with relative ease.  Not sure how, they just sorta do.  Hell, I laughed out loud when one came up to free Tucci from his cell, decked out in a half shirt and brandishing a baseball bat, all while strutting around like an allegedly rabid peacock.

It’s this stark lack of fear and tension in a muddled, well-trod script that leaves me feeling that the movie was a waste of a decent enough original idea and a fairly strong cast.  For a zombie-like film, it fails at nearly all levels, especially that of entertainment.  It could have been an okay B-movie kind o’ thing, but it’s played so straight and so cliched that it just isn’t any fun.  It looks as though a coveted script was overworked and rushed out, only to find itself waiting to be released as quietly as possible (I haven’t heard a peep about this thing from anyone).  It’s a shame, really, but my sympathy has boundaries, sad to say.