Zombies everywhere! Again.
Everywhere you look, another zombie film enters the horror theater – gratuitous, monotonous with lots of screaming and charging at citizens. Most zombie films follow the same tired progression of infection, a few bites before the big organizations interfere and the military kill indiscriminately. Then they find a cure, but it is too late, because the world has shifted to a new normal of devastation and survival.
All this is expected. There is not much more you can do with this subject matter. Usually, zombie horrors would be best suited with a bong and a beer and low expectations on the philosophical front.
However, Infection offers some introspection into matters pertaining to the political climate of many third world countries, vilified for fleeing political tyrants and social scourges that civilized countries refuse to acknowledge or worse; condescend to.
Infection is a Spanish language film from Venezuela and it ain’t half bad, even for someone like me who is bored to death with the subject. The reason this subtitled offering is more than tolerable is due to good direction and it is a well-made, realistic film with good acting and solid production value. That aside, it does play out its largest chunk like a typical zombie horror.
We follow a widower, Dr. Adam Vargas (Rubén Guevara), trying to cope with his wife’s recent death while the country begins to suffer the result of an insidious infection. This time round, the film blames the outbreak of an epidemic that starts with a drug addict mainlining a dangerous substance while infected with rabies. Dr. Vargas leaves his young son with his grandparents to travel to the city to assist the World Health Organization with his expertise. The security of the compound is breached and Dr. Vargas finds himself and a few colleagues fleeing the city, trying to get to his son before it is too late.
There is nothing special about Infection when you enjoy it as a generic zombie film, although it never bores or present with unrealistic scenarios. However, the film uses infection and brain contamination as a splendid metaphor for what has been happening in Venezuela and the subsequent struggle of its people. Not enough information is exposed regarding the decline of the infrastructure and social destruction in the aftermath of Chavism in the country and Infection does a great job of elucidating this subject without ever letting on that it has more to say.
The Venezuelan government banned this film – that should prove enough.
Although Infection has good action sequences and great make-up effects as our protagonist fights the threats to get to his son, the film does not force its political undercurrent down your throat at all. It drags us through devastated cities and desolate landscapes fraught with danger, allowing us to watch the suspense without preaching.
Director and co-writer Flavio Pedota skillfully manages to portray the real and appalling plight of Venezuelan citizens with those trying to flee contagion as more people get infected (with the ideologies of Latin America’s socialist and Bolivarianist blight), threatening to spread into neighboring countries.
A fresh turn at the end (no spoilers) is how Venezuelans remark on their rejection from neighboring countries, regardless of their means or status. Scenes of mass migration out of the terrible situation that destroyed their country serves well as an apocalyptic comparison to a ravaged world after the rabies-zombie infection.
It is hard to tell the fact and the fiction apart in these scenes.
That in itself should be alarming.
--Tasha Danzig
