[.ca] Infection

Expect creeps and gross out rather than shocks with this one:
The old joke is that you should avoid going to hospitals when you are not feeling well because there are too many sick people there. "Kansen" ("Infection") takes place in a hospital where nobody should go, and that includes the doctors and nurses in director Masayuki Ochiai's 2004 horror film. Last night I watched the season finale of "E.R." and with all the problems the fictional County Hospital has, it looks like a state of the art facility compared to the hospital in this movie. The doctors have not been paid, nine nurses have quit, patients are falling out of beds, and they are running out of syringes and just about every other type of necessary supply. One doctor suggests sending every incoming patient to surgery because that might help the place make enough money for them to get paid. A new nurse is so inexperienced with a syringe that she has turned a comatose patient's arm into a pincushion. Meanwhile, an ambulance in transit with a patient who has a rash that is quickly covering their entire body keeps asking for help. It takes that ambulance a while to get to this wretched little hospital, at which point we understand the movie will get to the business of the title. But before that happens things have already gotten critical when a patient dies because of a fatal mistake. Recriminations fly fast and furious, along with the fear that a malpractice case could close down the hospital and cost them their lousy jobs. When they agree to cover up the circumstances of the death, these doctors and nurses earn the fate that awaits them when the decomposing body is delivered and the unknown infectious disease is unleashed. Whatever it is, it appears to be a green fluid. The part where your muscle tissue falls apart with the sort of wet sound that makes you physical ill comes last. Before that there are nightmarish visions and a descent into insanity peculiar to the personality (and personal limitations) of each character. The basic premise of the killer disease is familiar and depending on your age the films "The Andromeda Strain" or "Cabin Fever" might be what first comes to your mind as cinematic reference points for this one. What Ochiai is able to take advantage of is both the setting and the characters to creep you out in this unsettling little horror film. There are enough gross outs involving bodies falling apart, but the parts that will get you come before the end stage of the infection as the characters fall apart mentally. Where did the green goo come from? The question is not really worth asking because it is simply the cause for the grim effects. The first act of the film is the most problematic because it takes a long while for the ambulance to get to the hospital and get the main part of the story going. But once things start happening "Kansen" jmoves into a higher gear as these doctors and nurses are all trapped in that place by feelings of duty, guilt, and fear as the infection jumps from person to person. The result is a solid little horror film without any of the cultural mysticism and nuances of the better known efforts in this genre from Japan. The goal here is not to shock you, but to simply creep you out and it succeeds more often than not in that effort. "Kansen" is the first title in the J-Horror Theater project put together by producer Taka Inchise. With the international success of "Ringu" and "Ju-On" the idea is to keep Japan at the forefront of making horror films and make a six-part film anthology. Involved in the project are Hideo Nakata ("Ringu"), Kiyoshi Kurosawa ("Kairo"), and Takashi Shimizu ("Ju-On"). Norio Tsuruta directs the second film in the series, "Yogen" ("Premonition"), and while the trailer for that film appears on this DVD, I have yet to see its availability. But on the basis of that trailer and this film there is reason to believe that these Japanese filmmakers will be able to succeed where their American counterparts failed so miserably when they started churning out all those splatter flicks.

This is one Infection horror fans will actually want to catch:
Japanese horror films truly are a different breed. Infection, from director Masayuki Ochiai, is one humdinger of a creepfest that doesn't spare the gore yet never descends to the level of a hack-and-slash effort. Its vibrantly dark cinematography and appropriately unsettling music provide the background for a veritable orgy of suspenseful horror as its characters' psychological overloads, helped along by a mysterious catalyst, give birth to something exceedingly ugly and quite often disgusting. In a sense, the film is somewhat confusing, in that it never exactly spells out the source of the infection or even the absolute nature of it, but I didn't feel the disappointment some viewers might at the ending. Central Hospital is in trouble. It's dangerously understaffed, no one has been paid, the director has disappeared, patients are coming to harm because no one is there in a timely fashion to see to their needs, supplies are dangerously low, doctors and nurses are putting in way too many hours to carry the load, etc. Lest you think things could get any worse, well, they most certainly do. It all starts when a mistake leads to the death of a patient. With their backs already to the wall thanks to the deteriorating state of the hospital, the doctors and nurses involved decide to cover up the real cause of death - it was a severe burn victim with no real family, after all. There is to be one more patient admitted to the hospital, however, one literally dumped on them by paramedics. John Doe has the mother of all infections, one that liquefies the internal organs and basically causes the victim to start dropping gooey gobs of green nastiness all over the place. One extremely unemotional doctor, who may or may not have knowledge of the little cover-up so recently planned upstairs, insists on treating the patient, trying to figure out the new pathogen, and thus gaining medical kudos for the effort. Everyone else is just revolted by the poor excuse of former humanity spreading his nasty green goodness all over the floor. Well, he of the liquefying organs sort of disappears, and the hospital crew enacts a search for their green and gloppy charge. It soon becomes clear, however that - whatever the patient had - it is quite infectious. Rather than call in the health department, they keep on keeping on under the direction of the emotionless pioneer (who I like to call Dr. Gung Ho). Needless to say, they start dropping like flies - well, not like flies, really, as they tend to do something really nasty such as burn their own hands off before commencing with gooey expectorations of the nastiest sort. I'm not sure why the hospital is almost completely dark throughout the film, but it makes for a most creepy of settings, and characters have the disarming tendency of sneaking up quietly behind one another out of the frame. It's really hard to describe the sort of horror that builds up as characters develop the infection, but it's more than capable of spooking and quite possibly disgusting you. The ending leaves some questions unanswered and may be something of a stretch for some viewers. Even if you find disappointment in the final minutes, though, there is more than enough gory goodness to keep you entertained up to that point. Infection (aka Kansen) is apparently the first film in the J-Horror Theatre series, which apparently aims to shock audiences and teach them the fine art of suspenseful dread. The Japanese are masters at creating atmospheres of indelible horror, and one can only hope that future movies in the series can succeed half as well as Infection in terms of going for the jugular of horror fans everywhere.