virus ( 1999 ) a film review by justin felix . copyright 1999 justin felix . this review also appears in the shrubbery at <a href= " http : //www . theshrubbery . prohosting . com/0299/movie2 . html " >http : //www . theshrubbery . prohosting . com/0299/movie2 . html</a> all of my film reviews are archived at <a href= " http : //us . imdb . com/m/reviews_by ? justin + felix " >http : //us . imdb . com/m/reviews_by ? justin + felix</a> written by dennis feldman and jonathan hensleigh . based upon the comic book virus by chuck pfarrer . directed by john bruno . starring jamie lee curtis , william baldwin , and donald sutherland . rated r ( contains violence , profanity , and excessive gore ) approx . 90 mins . synopsis : an energy life force from outer space smashes through the mir space station and rockets down to a huge soviet ship . a week later , a sinking salvage boat named the sea star trapped in the eye of a typhoon encounters the soviet ship . the sea star's ragtag crew boards the soviet vessel and discovers the alien life force is creating biomechanical lifeforms with spare parts from machines and people . comments : so , what do you get when you mix alien , the abyss , leviathan , deep rising , screamers , terminator , and star trek : first contact with just a touch of halloween in a blender ( if mixing movies in a blender were , indeed , possible ) ? well , you'd get virus , universal's much delayed new sci-fi thriller . this film , to the best of my recollection , was supposed to come out in august , but someone in the studio was nervous about having two horror films starring jamie lee curtis come out at nearly the same time . ( dimension's halloween : h20 was released around that time . ) so , universal opted to bury the movie in mid-january among several high-quality oscar contenders and romances for upcoming valentine's day . smart . those of us who want to see this movie , me for instance , have to battle knee-high snow drifts and frozen car doors just to get to the local theater . winter season in ohio , like most of the northeast , has been especially cruel this year . nonetheless , i managed to get out to see virus on opening night , and i'm glad i did . though by far not an original movie , virus contains enough cool special effects for its audience to overlook its many inherent flaws . one of these flaws , as you may well deduce from my opening comment , is that virus " borrows " heavily from many other sci-films . the basic plot comes directly from alien . this plot has been used , to varying degrees of effectiveness , in countless motion pictures . basically , the screenwriter puts a group of people on a ship , or some other isolated area , and has them hunted by some sort of alien or monster . usually , this creature kills all but one or two of the crew , and this ( these ) survivor ( s ) kill ( s ) the creature in the end . the creature in virus is an alien-energy-life-form-thingie creating all sorts of different biomechanical monsters to terrorize the crew of the doomed sea star . you'll recognize these creations right away if you're a sci-fi fan . tiny mechanical spiders from runaway . human-sized borg people from star trek : first contact . etc . to be honest , this creative " borrowing " really didn't bother me all that much . they say it's hard to be original . i don't know . technically , though , the special effects in this film are surprisingly effective . some may not like them because they are , at times , quite gruesome , but most will probably get a kick out of them like my brother and i did . besides , certain parts of this movie are so absurd that they lend enough disbelief to counter any real disgust one may get from seeing dismembered body parts and the like . the actors in virus do a lot to offset any genuine terror the movie may engender . donald sutherland , a longtime character actor who has appeared in such classic sci-fi films as invasion of the body snatchers and puppet masters , is ridiculously over-the-top as the sea star's greedy captain . one set of lines he delivered halfway through the film had the entire theater laughing ; it was * that * cheesy . william baldwin plays the male lead . is it just me , or does billy baldwin seem like an actor you just can't take seriously ? he almost always looks goofily perplexed . one of the minor characters tried to play the best queequeg he could ( someone put tattoos over his face to make him look even more like the harpooner from moby dick ) . only jamie lee curtis is really convincing here . curtis is an accomplished actress capable of many genres . she can do comedy , action , and drama equally well . but , first and foremost in my mind , curtis is a horror actress , the scream queen . she had her start in such early slasher films as terror train , prom night , and the quintessential slice-and-dice classic halloween . she was also quite memorable in john carpenter's overlooked atmospheric ghost story the fog . it's good to see her back in her element again . in virus , she first seems to assume a ripley-like ( the heroine of the alien saga ) character , but , surprisingly , she doesn't stay " tough " through the movie . instead , she becomes so terrified as to be nearly paralyzed . nobody can pull this off better than curtis . she was perfect as the threatened babysitter in the original halloween , and she pulls off the scared-out-of-her-wits female lead without the camp the other actors put into their roles . overall , virus is an entertaining sci-fi thriller which makes for a pretty good saturday afternoon matinee feature . fans of the genre will pick up on a number of the sources for the creatures and storyline , but they'll still enjoy it . what variation of the same theme will hollywood churn out next ? let's hope it's even better than this . virus , after all , is a huge step above the insipid deep rising , last winter's horror-on-a-huge-ship-floating-in-the-middle-of-nowhere movie . virus is rated r for a lot of violence and gore sequences . it gets pretty intense at times , so i wouldn't recommend parents taking the youngsters to it . 
