The Horror Show
Pandemic
by John Suits
Mockumentaries and found-footage aside, first person POV films aren’t anything new, and typically they’re not very good. They seem to be making a comeback as recently a film was released in theaters entitled Hardcore Henry. While I am a huge fan of first person video games, nothing about Hardcore Henry excited me or enticed me to watch. When I saw the trailer for recent VOD release Pandemic though, I knew I had found a first person POV film that had finally caught my interest. Unfortunately, I soon found out, the trailer is once again the best thing about a film I’ve chosen to watch.
Set in the near-future, Pandemic is a post-apocalyptic movie following a team of civilians who must work and put their lives at risk in exchange for food and housing within a government safe-zone. The team is sent out on a search and rescue mission with the most valuable commodity of all, a doctor from the CDC. It’s never really explained (as with most things in this film) but it seems as though doctors are few and far between. So to me, it’s ridiculous that the government would put the doctors that should be working on a cure at risk instead of keeping them safely inside their facilities. As for the virus, well, we don’t ever find much out about that either. All I learned was that there were five stages of the virus and when you hit a certain point, you’re fucked. I think if there had been more back story that cleared up some of the virus’ mystery a few things would have made more sense. I don’t need to know the origins of the virus, I would just like to have understood how it worked. In one scene you’d have stage four and five infected attacking, completely out of their minds and rabid, but then in the next you’d have stage four and five infected that are able to think strategically and set traps.
Pandemic has a pretty fantastic cast including Alfie Allen, Rachel Nichols, Mekhi Phifer, and Missi Pyle; however, don’t let that fool you into thinking that the film makes a lick of sense or that it’s anything but a fun gore-film with some spots of entertaining dialogue (typically delivered by Alfie Allen).
I totally understand that this team is not a team of “trained soldiers” but you’d think that since they’d been out on missions before that they’d have more common sense and better decision making skills.
I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by Dr. Lauren’s storyline. Once her true intentions are revealed, her bumbling mess of a character made more sense. Which leads me to circle back to the fact that doctors, the only people who can help with the cure, are being unnecessarily sent out into the hot zones. There’s this device called “The Mosquito” that helps identify whether or not someone is infected. A small needle pricks the person and then you simply check the color of the blood to determine their status; black for infected, red for healthy. Any one of the members of the S&R team would have been able to use the device and determine a person’s infected status, why waste a doctor in the field? Ah… plot devices, my friends, plot devices.
I had truly hoped that Pandemic would be a better film. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, not by a longshot. In fact, there were quite a few first person POV scenes with violence and gore galore, reminiscent of fun zombie-bashing video games, but those moments weren’t enough to make up for any shortcomings. There were noticeable goofs and plot holes that irritated me immensely, and in the end, Rachel Nichols and Alfie Allen weren’t enough to save the film, especially with its borderline stupid ending.
But, it was something to watch and pass the time.
From reading other people’s opinions on the film, I think Pandemic gets a lot more hate than it deserves. I didn’t hate this film, I just don’t think I’ll go out of my way to watch it a second time.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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