I saw a trailer for Infestation on YouTube in early 2009 when the movie seemed to be destined for theaters. Seven months later, I finally caught a glimpse of the movie's fate in a promo on the SyFy channel announcing its TV premiere, and then yet one more month later in a Fry's Electronics, where I spied the DVD on the shelf. A message to editor John later and here it is, and I suppose it was worth the wait. I have to admit that I'm biased towards this kind of movie: creatures getting splattered in a mish-mash of comedy and sci-fi or horror (preferrably, if you really want to boil it down, with a schlub in an increasingly battered suit as the hero), so perhaps that affected (or infected) my enjoyment, but this is a perfectly pleasant time-waster.
In the case of Infestation, the schlubby suit-wearer is a character named Cooper, played by Chris Marquette. In 2004 and 2005 I saw Marquette in The Girl Next Door and Freddy vs. Jason, and I thought he had big things on the horizon, and aside from a poorly-advised imitation of a Hannibal Lecter speech, he still seems like a reasonably charismatic and funny guy who deserves more movie roles. Cooper works in a call center thanks to some string-pulling by his militant father (Ray Wise), but he spends more of his office time playing a prank game getting people to turn around and then pretending he didn't try and get their attention than he does work. Such horseplay -- and a rude interaction with a customer -- have printed Cooper's pink slip, but before he can get fired, a high-pitched howl knocks everyone unconscious, and when Cooper comes to, he finds himself surrounded by unconscious, cocooned co-workers and giant, angry bugs.
Infestation is a low-budget movie, so the CG bugs often look just that, particularly when characters are required to tussle with them. Thankfully, writer/director Kyle Rankin has chosen (probably out of necessity) to stylize the movie enough that the buggy villains look appealingly cartoonish (I especially like their foamy white blood, which looks to be approximately the consistency of Cool Whip or shaving cream). Rankin previously directed the "Project Greenlight" winner The Battle of Shaker Heights, which I haven't seen, but he does fine here, staging a fairly impressive amount of mayhem given the obvious constraints on the movie and otherwise just keeping his head down and not trying to bury the movie in faux-Raimi madness.
One of the most unusual themes in the movie is that of family. Not that there's anything wrong with family, but there literally isn't a major character in the movie (or even many supporting characters in the film) that doesn't have an on-screen relative. In addition to Cooper and his father, the group of survivors include the film's heroine Sara (Brooke Nevin), who watches Cooper's boss/her mother Maureen (Deborah Geffner) get scooped up and taken away by the bug creatures; father-and-son team Albert (Wesley Thompson) and Hugo (E. Quincy Sloan), concerned about their dying mom; and Cindy (Kinsey Packard) pointing the way to the house where her brother and his wife live. Hell, there's even a trio of rogue vigilantes late in the film that include a father (Jim Cody Williams) and daughter (Diane Gaeta). I can't say the movie finds much time to bring some grand meaning to all of this, what with all the bug-dogs and spider-people, but it's an intriguing inclusion.
I've already covered Marquette's performance, but everyone is pretty good. Nevin stays punchy and never plays the "damsel in distress" even when the movie tries to put her in those situations, and she forms some really believable chemistry with Marquette by the end of the movie. Wise is a shade underutilized, but he gets in a really great joke or two to make up for it. Albert and Hugo, meanwhile, are two of the most likable, nice people I've ever seen in a movie like this (which are normally filled with selfish double-crossers), and I especially liked the film's gentle but straightforward handling of Hugo's inability to hear. Lastly, Packard is a bit all over the map, but I would chalk it up more to the screenplay than her performance, which never quite fills in her character motivation in a completely clear way.
Infestation isn't destined for the history books, but it's a fun little movie that I imagine genre fans wouldn't mind tossing on every once in awhile. I don't want to sound like I'm dishing out a backhanded compliment here, but when most of the horror movies I see are bending over backwards trying to make their mark, I like a movie that isn't too ambitious for its own good. Rankin seems to know what kind of movie he wants to make, and he makes it, with the occasional flair or flourish, but without trying to overstep his bounds or shake things up to the point where the movie starts to fall apart. I'm sure Rankin would have liked to see his film in theaters, but the SyFy Channel actually seems like a good fit. I've seen several awful movies on that channel, but this one should leave a bored Saturday night viewer pleasantly surprised.
The DVD
Infestation gets a fittingly stylized cover artwork that looks more like the front of a comic book cover than a DVD. I think they could have gone a little farther with it though, the design would look a little more dynamic if Marquette and Nevin were moved back a little bit (and perhaps it would be better if they hadn't put her in a ridiculously sleazy cleavage top that never appears in the movie). The back cover is a little lazier, with too much empty space. The cover art is wrapped around an Infiniti case with no insert, but there is a sticker on the plastic informing potential buyers to text a number to get the movie's trailer sent to them. A clever idea, but the sticker is small and dull-looking; future releases should probably make it bigger and really spell it out with colors and fonts so that anyone browsing actually notices.
The Video and Audio
Infestation looks a little fuzzy via First Look's 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen tranfer (which the case says is 1.78:1, but the film itself is clearly 1.85), but otherwise fine given the film's budget. Colors are occasionally vivid but there's not a lot of fine detail in the transfer and blacks could be a little richer. On the upside, I didn't see any artifacts. The only other quibble I might add is the fact that a flashback/dream sequence (to one of the earliest scenes in the film) looks noticeably more vivid than the rest of the image, and I don't know why.
Viewers might panic a little hearing the first dialogue scene in the movie in this 5.1 Dolby Digital audio mix, because it sounds muddy and awful, but the commentary indicates the scene was redubbed, which explains the poor sound. The rest of the movie sounds fine, with clear dialogue and some mediocre attempts at directional audio. The film generally tends to amp up the music and sound effects in an attempt to create some true 5.1 surround sound audio, but for the most part, it sounds a bit flat. Not a big deal though. English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing and Spanish subtitles are also included.
The Extras
Sadly, there's only one bonus feature on this disc, an audio commentary by writer/director Kyle Rankin. It's an alright commentary, with Rankin explaining a good amount of production detail and the challenges of shooting a low-budget film, but it'd be gangbusters to have had a cast commentary as well, or to have included the numerous deleted scenes that Rankin mentions were chopped out of the film.
Conclusion
I enjoyed Infestation quite a bit. I don't know that it will be worth running out and buying for everyone, but I'll recommend it anyway, although if you're skeptical, perhaps scanning the SyFy Channel listings to see if they're planning on reairing the movie first isn't a bad idea.
Please check out my other DVDTalk DVD and theatrical reviews here and my film blog The Following Preview here.
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