Infected (2013)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: If you’ve seen one zombie flick you’ve seen them all. 

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• However I got this flick, it started with a watermark and I was afraid it wasn’t going away.
• So these are just zombies then? Kewl.
• I picked this flick because A. I thought it was more about a viral outbreak and B. Michael Madsen and William Forsythe. And I realize now it’s more a zombie flick and both Madsen & Forsythe is probably only in it for 5 minutes each.
• Not sure who this film is marketed to but the titles are showing a very buff half-naked male blacksmith.
• Wonder what he’s making…he’s certainly forging ahead!

• Is that Tim Heidecker?
• Quick cut to Michael Madsen and company in a house frantically fighting off zombies.
• It’s not even 5 minutes and Madsen is already giving his Oscar-clip survive speech!
• So now we’re in a 12 hour earlier flashback and Madsen and company are still holed up like before. What’s the point of this flashback only going 12 hours back? Are we going to have more flashbacks as to the origin of the outbreak or is the movie just going to be happy using the Madsen VO from before the credits explaining what happened?
• Why is Dr. Who in this flick? This kid with Forsythe literally looks like a gothic Tom Baker.
• Forsythe is blaming Facebook, Twitter and Skype for ruining his sons’ generation and their weak survival instincts. He may have a point but let’s see him correctly send an email with an attachment.
• NARRAGANSETT BEER!! Awesome!

• That’s not a drag queen? Wow. I would’ve bet the bank that lady was trans.
• OK. What hooker takes a john out in the middle of the forest to do the deeds? No seriously, is she the wood nymph?
• Some whale tail and bewbs though so I’m not complaining. Still, I can’t believe some actress got nude for this shit.
• Forsythe happened to shoot a rabbit earlier and wants his nephew to help him prepare it. That rabbit won’t feed even 2 adults.
• I have a very hard time believing William Forsythe being a doctor.
• Why does the extremely sick Grandma Annie look younger than Forsythe?
• Grandma Annie just bit Forsythe. So we all now know where this is going.
• At 17:00, this may be the quickest I ever got completely bored in a Schlocktoberfest flick.
• I have a very hard time believing Forsythe and Madsen’s stock market shop talk.
• I’m not sure if at this point in the flashback if they even know of the impending pandemic. They haven’t mentioned it, Forsythe didn’t have any concern about Grandma Annie either. So why are they at this lodge and why is Grandma sick? Is this a haphazard vacation getaway? I wasn’t even sure most of these people knew or even liked each other.
• Some kid just tried to lie to impress a girl that a fallen tree in the woods was where Leia met Wicket in Return of the Jedi. 
• This guy telling the chick that his ex-girlfriend was saving herself for marriage and that he wasted 2 years of his life for her while this dumb stock music is playing is very weird.
• The kid and girl tell the others that they witnessed a deer eat a squirrel in their travels. It could happen. Maybe it was very hungry.
• Seriously how bad does Madsen and Forsythe need this money?

• Grandma Annie is just singing to herself. So you know shit’s about to get bad.
• I’m finding it harder to believe that Forsythe is a seasoned hunter who can skin and dress a buck less than him being Flattop in Dick Tracy. 
• Oh yeah there’s some random lady driving around the woods area. She’s not that random since we saw her in the beginning of the film with Madsen and company. But she’s been driving a long time now with no explanation. And now she’s talking to some random little girl that crossed the highway. 
• The girl’s father has a mild case of the plague it seems. 
• He’s trying hard to convince driving lady that he has a condition and didn’t take his meds today. Meanwhile he’s ashen pale with blood and black spots all over his face. 
• Now there’s a whole horde of ghouls running at driving lady. She gets away though so don’t you worry. 
• How is it that they are deep in what seems to be woods in a southern US state and have plenty of Gansett, which is made in Rhode Island, meanwhile here in NJ, I struggle to find it. Makes no sense. 
• Unless Narragansett Beer coproduced this flick. It’s literally in every scene. Hi Neighbor! 

• I can only pick out maybe every third word from Forsythe who is mumbling his way through this bullshit. 
• Way too many closeups in this flick. I don’t need to see Madsen’s nostrils this close. 
• I’m not nearly drunk enough yet and there’s still an hour left. I need more Gansett!
• Back to plague dad and it’s a montage of him slowly going insane between him talking normal on a cell phone about his daughter (to maybe his wife) and him screaming to the sky over what seems like a bloody corpse (maybe his daughter). At any rate I don’t care.
• Now let’s see what Grandma Annie is up to. She looks plagued-up like the others and somehow leaves the lodge and is now wandering the woods. 
• I’m reminiscing back to the first few Schlocktoberfests when we used to watch mainstream flicks like The Gate, Cat’s Eye and Company of Wolves. Man, have we veered long from the beaten path. 
• I’m somewhat intrigued by this drinking game the young couple is playing. They have a deck of cards balanced on a whiskey bottle’s cap. They take turns blowing off cards from the deck. I think you have to take a shot if you accidentally blow the whole deck off instead of just one or two cards per blow. It’s hard to tell since it’s edited poorly to really tell. 
• If anyone knows the actual rules to that drinking game, let me know in the comments.

• They sent out the Dr. Who dork to fetch firewood while they play the drinking game and it’s been a few rounds of them getting drunk not noticing he’s now dead by Grandma Annie but they also were just starting to pork each other right in the kitchen. Didn’t they think the other kid would be back soon?
• Oh but out of nowhere they panic and run outside looking for the kid. Maybe their spider-senses were tingling. 
• Oh they heard him screaming they tell the others? Maybe I missed that. 
• I’ve seen William Forsythe act in a dozen or so flicks, most of them decent, and if you watched this you would never know he’s been in major Hollywood productions. 
• Why is this movie so long? There’s no ungodly reason this shouldn’t be 80 minutes tops. 
• Madsen is attacked in a barn by a plague person and is possibly bit in the hand. But Madsen doesn’t seem too frightened by what transpired as he kills the attacker. If anything he looks mildly annoyed. 
• Grandma Annie is back at the lodge and looks confused. But not raving and seems relatively calm when her grandkids approach her to help. So this plague or disease works intermittently then?
• The driving lady is possibly Madsen’s wife, girlfriend perhaps. They know each other is all. 
• He introduces her as his wife. Now I’m a little ponderous as to how he knows these people and is vacationing with them in a lodge in a forest when they hardly know his wife. Kinda strange right? I she a mail-order bride and he just got her delivered?
• Hahaha. Why does Forsythe have his stethoscope around his neck in the woods?
• There’s this chubby guy in the lodge now and other than the opening scene I don’t remember ever seeing him in the past 40 minutes. 
• Imagine being the screenwriter for this film and having such a shitty talent for writing yet another hackneyed and useless zombie flick set in the woods with a handful of survivors. This movie brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Abso-fucking-lutely NOTHING. 
• Say, whatever happened to the forest whore that was attacked earlier? Wouldn’t she become one of the infected and running around looking for victims to blow? I mean eat! Maybe whatever venereal disease she had killed the infection.
• Grandma is back on killer mode. Killed the girl that was maybe in the film for 6 minutes. 

• Where in Crom’s name did all these zombies come from? Wasn’t this a secluded forest lodge?
• This is the most generic metal music I ever heard. 
• Now we’re back to the opening scene. So fucking glad I get to watch this scene twice. 
• Madsen consoles his wife that everything will be OK. Meanwhile, comically, on the other side of her chair is an open window and as luck would have it, a zombie grabs her. I’m laughing more so because right before Madsen consoled his wife he was screaming at everyone about surviving and not doing anything foolish. 
• The radio news has an awful lot of information about this outbreak and the zombies after just a few hours of this happening. 
• In my indifference to the actual details of the plot, I don’t have a clue where this one kid went earlier and is now struggling to get back in the fortified lodge. 
• In case this matters, Madsen’s wife is pregnant. Doubt this matters. 
• I’m quite shocked and saddened that Madsen and Forsythe have been in this movie the whole time. I really assumed they would be in this for like 15 minutes before their untimely deaths. 
• Forsythe with every dramatic skill he could muster: “Whatever you do, don’t give in to the maddening compulsion to eat human flesh.”
• Madsen is now narrating the finale of the movie. Told us that they didn’t make it; he lost his wife and baby and for some reason his legs are shackled with chains. This is beyond bad. 
• Oh yeah the blacksmith guy. That’s Madsen’s son? He was the kid with the drinking game. Had no idea that was his son. 
• Now Madsen is telling us that he and his blacksmith son built a special Mad Max type car called the “War Wagon.”  How much further in the future has this flick went for them to be building custom apocalyptic cars?

• And how has the bitten Madsen survived this long?!?!
• And here I though this flick couldn’t bore me more. With less than 10 minutes left it’s just is watching the son scrounge for survival supplies alone. 
• I haven’t seen the Resident Evil flicks because I have some self-respect but even now I’m thinking it’s gotta be better than this. Right?
• “No help. No government intervention.” Just like this Trump administration. 
• This War Wagon has the top speed of a USPS truck. 
• The son made it to a survivors camp called Purgatory. They all seem happy there. 
• So we never see Madsen at this camp. So how is he narrating what’s happening?
• Stop the credits! We must show you this quick scene of the son approaching what may or may not be his still pregnant mom/step-mom. Again, not sure what this all fucking means. 
• Ha. This was filmed in Rhode Island. That explains all the Gansett. 
• The only thing scary about this is the notion that somewhere for some young kids this may be their first horror film or at the very least their first zombie outbreak flick. 

 

Was it Entertaining: 

Any Good Gore: I watched this so long ago that I don’t really remember. But don’t worry about it because no one should ever see it.

Any Nudity: Yeah, some whale tail thong and boobs on the forest hooker.

Best Quote: “Whatever you do, don’t give in to the maddening compulsion to eat human flesh.”

Best Scene: I’ve been more scared and entertained by a Misfits song.

Worst Scene: The fact that I had to endure the opening scene TWICE made me so frustrated and angry.

How Pandemicky Was It?: This was nothing but a zombie flick. A utterly shitty, totally useless, completely dull and devoid of any originality zombie flick. 

Final Thoughts: I’ve seen worse flicks during Schlocktoberfest but not much worse. This was really scrapping the bottom of the barrel even for a zombie flick. It brought absolutely nothing new to the genre. Group of people fortified in a forest cabin fighting off a horde of flesh-eating infected ghouls. That’s it. And this had some of the lowest production value, horrible acting and mediocre gore effects that I would rather watch all 34 seasons of The Walking Dead than ever seeing another minute of this.

Score: 1 Narragansett Lager (out of ten)