Virus X DVD Movie Review

Sybil Danning fans can take a sick day for this one — but all others should buck up and move on to the upcoming The Walking Dead DVD release for your viral zombie fix.

The story follows a group of unfortunately infected medical students who're quarantined inside their lab with a festering, mutated version of the H1N1 virus (that's the flu, to you). As from Sybil Danning, the most interesting of cast are Jai Day and Domiziano Arcangeli (not because I've ever heard of them, but those names sound so totally made-up), who play the good guy and the bad guy, respectively.

When you look at the cast of Virus X, it's rather like the United Non-Colors of Benneton: Bad guy looks like a Swede from hell, good guy a pale Brit, and hot scientist Danning, a flaxen Dane. On top of that, the palette of the film sets seems to've been inspired by gunmetal and the off- off-white padded cells of insane asylums.

Once the pace picks up and Danning drops in and out of the story (she's basically only got a cameo, more's the pity), we shadow the doomed student body through their machinations to freedom. The camera shakes in their wake, and the quick edits run to catch up. Even so, the story is tedious and hard to grasp… in a word: boring.

As far as the horror aspects go, there aren't many. In the third act, we do see some innards turn into liquefied goo, but that's about it. Fortunately, the effects in Virus X are (at least, mostly) practical.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson