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STUDIO: Sony
MSRP: $24.96
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 89 min.
SPECIAL FEATURES: Trailers
The Pitch
Gotta go with the official tagline here: “They’re running out of patients.”
The Humans
Brian Lloyd, Tori White, Deanna Brooks (Playmate, May 1998), Nicole Rayburn, Serria Tawan (Playmate, November 2002)
The Nutshell
Alien parasites take over a hospital, turning the female staff into raving sugar junkies that proceed to seduce, cocoon and/or devour the men. Our only hope: a handful of injured basketball players, a slutty cheerleader, and shy ‘final girl’ Cherie (White).
So many buttons, so little time.
The Lowdown
I know what you’re going to say. “But Thor! Didn’t you slag a sexy-nurse horror movie just last week?” Well yeah… but this is more like it. French-kiss slug attacks? Check. Girls acting horny in nurse outfits? Check. By any conventional measure this is not a great movie, but it’s not trying to be. What’s important is that it has a game plan and doesn’t waste a second putting it into action. No dicking around with needless exposition, and no blowing money on fancy FX shots either. The visual style is clean and simple, dominated by primary colors—blue and green for victims, red for villains. The acting isn’t anything special but the cast maintains a consistent sense of humor, a quality lacking in many recent horror flicks.
Man, that store-bought ravioli will go right through ya.
The action gets a little clumsy in the second half, with some confusing screen geography and at least one character death that gets dismissed far too quickly. When Cherie’s latent Ripley gene inevitably kicks in, it’s not clear whether her sudden upgrade in wardrobe, hair, and makeup is supposed to be a meta-joke or not—the movie is otherwise blessedly free of Scream-style self-referencing.
The Package
Anamorphic HD-native transfer, Dolby 5.1, and a forced trailer for Ultraviolet. Too bad there aren’t any feature-specific supplements—I suspect director/co-writer Kate Robbins would have some things to say about female empowerment in horror films that I might actually be interested in hearing. Plus, any filmmaker who gives screen credit to each and every background extra is all right in my book, even if they’re just doing it to pad out the running time.
