Following their creepy Catfish mockumentary, directing duo Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman turned to the horror genre proper with the Paranormal Activity franchise. The pair delivered the third and fourth installments of the now-completed series – the third is in my opinion the scariest of the lot – and clearly they got a taste for the little genre that could. And so, for their next outing they’re re-teaming with Blumhouse chief Jason Blum to make the chills creep farther up our spines in Virus.
As its title implies, the movie is orchestrated around a virus. In this case, it’s a parasitic infection dubbed Worm Flu that turns people into sprinting loons with a desire to vomit worm blood into other people’s mouths. Who said the infection genre was dead?
While the broader strokes of the movie finds the entire planet at the mercy of those wriggly fiends, the story centers on two teenagers left to their own devices for the evening. They opt to disregard their father’s rules (you know, to stay in and not get infected) and go to a party instead. Can you see where this is going?
How can the Catfish duo bring something fresh to this well-trod subgenre of horror? By making it scary as hell, of course. The first trailer plays like a run-of-the-mill B-movie, with some pretty vile blood-spewing moments thrown in for gorehounds. Looks like we might have to wait and see though if Viral packs any new twists when it hits theaters on July 29.
Teenaged sisters Emma (Sofia Black-D’Elia) and Stacey (Analeigh Tipton) live a normal life, until their small suburban neighborhood is stricken with a mysterious parasitic virus. As the disease rapidly spreads throughout the town, the two band together to barricade themselves from infection. But it may already be too late – when the virus enters their home, the sisters are faced with an impossible choice: protect each other, or survive the virus.
