When a virus turns people into bloodthirsty maniacs, a security guard
attempts to save her daughter.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Gustavo Hernandez
Starring: Paula Silva, Daniel Hendler, Pilar Garcia, Rasjid César, Sofía González
Not another bloody zombie movie. But wait, this one has a clever
gimmick. Its running zombies (actually victims of a rage virus rather
than the undead) have to rest for periods of 32 seconds. While this idea
should lead to some suspenseful scenes, director Gustavo Hernández
introduces his concept early on, only to seemingly forget about it until
the final 10 minutes of the movie. Remove this unique element and you
have another middle of the road zombie movie, albeit one with a greater
attention to craft than most of its cynically produced rivals.
Virus: 32 shares a similar setup with another 2022
Shudder acquisition, the Taiwanese movie The Sadness. Both movies see a city (in this case the Uruguayan capital
Montevideo) become a battleground as its inhabitants succumb to a
mystery virus that turns them into bloodthirsty savages, essentially
fast-moving zombies of the type seen in
Nightmare City,
28 Days Later
and Zack Snyder's
Dawn of the Dead
remake.
Hernández's heroine is Iris (Paula Silva), a security guard at a
seemingly disused and sprawling athletics club. Bucking the trend of
bookish, innocent horror heroines, Iris is introduced smoking pot and
drinking rum immediately prior to her night shift. She's also posited as
a bad mom to her young daughter Tata (Pilar Garcia), whom she is
forced to bring to work after forgetting it was her turn to take the kid
off her ex-husband's hands.
Iris and Tata get separated at the former's workplace when the lights
go out, an occurrence that coincides with society collapsing on the
streets outside. It's not long before the rabid maniacs make their way
inside the club, leaving Iris in a battle to find Tata and make their
escape.
Hernández is best known for his 2010 debut
The Silent House. That movie gained international attention (and even
a US remake
starring Elizabeth Olsen) due to Hernández's decision to shoot the movie
in apparently a single take, something that's become a cliché at this
point but which was still fresh and exciting in 2010. In his latest
movie's opening scene, we're led to believe he's adopting a similar
tactic, with sweeping camera moves reminiscent of
I am Cuba, as his camera goes in and out of apartments before seemingly
attaching itself to a drone for a bird's eye tour of the collapse of
Montevideo. After the credits the movie settles down into more
traditional filmmaking and never quite repeats the thrills of that
opening.
Virus: 32 is most effective when it's a simple stalk and
slash movie, with Iris attempting to evade various pursuers. Hernández's
film would appear to be influenced by Spielberg's under-rated
War of the Worlds, both in its working class, single parent protagonist and in how the
camera snakes around lockers and corners in similar fashion to
Spielberg's tense Tim Robbins sequence. There are moments when the film
is a little too explicit in its influences, with a pregnancy subplot
lifted straight from Snyder's Dawn of the Dead and a
soundtrack that owes a significant debt to John Murphy's propulsive
score for 28 Days Later. If it never lives up to its premise, it does at least provide the
occasional well-executed, economical set-piece, and its unconventional
heroine offers something different. Some viewers may find its violence
towards children and animals unnecessarily nasty though.
