Virus (1999)
- Andrew Smith
- May 27
- 5 min read
"Life on Earth is in for a shock"
Plot
When the crew of an American tugboat find an abandoned Russian research vessel drifting in the eye of a storm, they start to dream of the money they’ll be paid if they can claim it as salvage. However, when they board they soon realise that they will share the same fate that befell the Russian crew – a hostile alien life form that has taken over the ship views humans as a virus and is prepared to wipe each and every one of them out.
Review
Originally scheduled for a big budget summer release in 1998 with the tune of $75m behind it, Virus suffered at the box office and was hammered by critics when it was eventually put out early in 1999 due to restructuring at Universal Studios. That delay to early 1999 introduced a fatal problem: the twin film curse which we saw a lot of in the late 90s. Two remarkably similar movies developed independently that end up releasing right on top of each other such as Dante’s Peak and Volcano, Armageddon and Deep Impact, and A Bug’s Life and Antz. Virus had the incredibly bad luck of coming out just months after another aquatic monster movie, Deep Rising. That had essentially the exact same premise, with mercenaries boarding a seemingly abandoned luxury cruise ship at sea, only to be attacked by something deadly. Deep Rising was very much a been there, done that kind of movie. But ultimately, it was the far better and much more entertaining movie of the two. It knew what it was. By the time Virus finally limped into theatres in January 1999, the audience for aquatic sci-fi horror was already burnt out. The delay strongly hints that the studio executives knew the end product wasn't very good and they were scrambling to do something about it. Bizarrely enough, it even got its own action figure line, which is a sign of just how much Universal were originally banking on this! Maybe they should have released it when they had the chance.
Despite all of the alien hardware on display and a decent sized cast just waiting to be killed off, Virus is a boring disappointment from the very first scene to the last. It just terribly drags from set piece to set piece, and narrative fails the audience so fundamentally. There's this psychological disconnect that happens where the filmmakers spend way too much time having the characters just touring the empty Russian ship, walking around with absolutely zero tension. Exploring an abandoned ship can be terrifying if you use the mechanics of tension correctly. Build up a bit of dread before you unleash hell. But here, the mystery is never made engaging. Even though the audience already knows something terrible happened to the original crew, the script never capitalizes on that and gives you nothing to hold onto. By the time the salvage crew encounters the aliens, the viewer has already subconsciously switched off, and their brain has disengaged from the story completely. It leads you to the obvious conclusion that the producers must have blown their entire budget on the special effects, instead of investing in a good script.
Once the crew do eventually come across the aliens, and the weird assortment of robots and cyborgs that it likes to assemble in its automation shop, Virus does pick up slightly but even then, the script doesn’t seem to know what to do with its alien villains. If this advanced alien intelligence genuinely views humanity as a biological virus infecting the world, and its solution is to assimilate human flesh into metal cyborgs in an automation shop, is it possible the alien doesn't see itself as a conqueror at all? From the aliens' perspective, it's not committing an act of war, but simply administering a technological cure to the universe. Flipping the villain into the universe's immune system at least has some interesting questions to ponder. However, Virus doesn't care about any of that outside of it's original idea. Clichés rule the roost for the most part, with a few action set pieces that barely register a pulse, and characters are killed off in a relatively predictable order. If you’re going to invest so much money in a film, then at least try to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
Director Bruno was a visual effects man on Terminator 2: Judgment Day and you can spot some of the similarities with the creatures on show here. The cyborgs that the alien creates looks like some sort of mutant offspring of the Borg from Star Trek. They look excellent, with the characters who are killed off and turned into the cyborgs looking particularly menacing in layers of make-up and robotics. It’s a pity that these cyborgs don’t really do much except skulk around in the shadows and leave the bulk of damage to the larger robot. They leave the actual damage to the main villain, which is a much larger robot - basically the alien in robot form. And that larger robot is where the problems start. Bringing it to life relies on this early ropy-looking CGI that completely takes the viewer out of the moment, and which can best be described as some sort of drunken older brother of Johnny Five from Short Circuit. It moves weirdly, the compositing is off, and it just ruins the illusion completely. This mix of great practical effects and highly dated 1999 CGI creates a deeply jarring visual experience. It ages the film terribly when watched back in the 2020s.
On board for all of this, you have a bafflingly wasted ensemble cast with Jamie Lee Curtis providing the Ripley-esque heroine material, William Baldwin as the bland hero and Donald Sutherland as the salty sea dog captain, but they’re not required to do much more than chew their way through some badly-written lines and provide the necessary exposition to get from plot point A to plot point B. Curtis and Baldwin have absolutely zero chemistry and their forced romance is just as inexcusable as Sutherland’s ropey faux-Irish accent, as he hams it up in one of his worst ever performances. It's honestly baffling to watch an actor of his calibre do that, but this points directly to the core issue, the thin writing. Sutherland had nothing else to work with so tried to inject something into the role. It is impossible to care about the rest of the cast because they get tiny amounts of screen time and they are incredibly thinly written. They serve only to spout badly written exposition to move the plot from point A to point B. Sutherland just wildly overcompensates to entertain himself.
Final Verdict
Virus wants its audience to love it and there’s plenty of potential just waiting to be mined but, unfortunately, it’s lack of energy and general lethargy mean that it never really gets going. It's a skeleton of a film which lacks the muscle and tendons to make it move. You have to wonder whether it being put back in the release schedule did have something to do with the end product not being very good after all.
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Virus Director(s): John Bruno Writer(s): Chuck Pfarrer (creator: Dark Horse Comic Book series: "Virus"), Dennis Feldman (screenplay) Actor(s): Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, William Baldwin, Joanna Pacula, Marshall Bell, Sherman Augustus, Cliff Curtis Duration: 99 mins |  |
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