10 Sci-Fi Movie Ideas Too Good To Fail (That Did It Anyway)
3. Virus - A Computer Virus Eradicates... HUMANS! (in A Somehow Boring Alien Rip-off)
Released in 1999, Virus can stand shoulder to shoulder
with the same year’s The Astronaut’s Wife in competition for the dubious honour
of “impressively original sci-fi stories with stellar casts which squandered
their considerable potential”. Adapted from a dark, gritty comic series (not
unlike Spawn and Barb Wire, for anyone noticing a pattern), the film follows a
salvage crew, including an alcoholic Donald Sutherland and Jamie Lee Curtis in resilient
heroine mode, who comes across a damaged space station harbouring a dark
secret.
Said secret being the insanely gruesome revelation that its tech went AWOL and began assimilating the station’s crew members by-by-bloody-bit, creating grotesque human-robot hybrid fused to the ship’s operating system.
It’s a twisted premise and one which the film’s endlessly impressive gross-out effects mine for great effect, but it’s nonetheless stuck in a flick which is otherwise derivative, predictable, and so poorly-lit that half the time there’s no way of seeing the amazing effects work.
The film’s director John Bruno may have been relegated back to the small screen after this, but at least star Curtis was willing to admit that she enjoys having the flick handy whenever her friends feel like having a bad movie night.