Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
When the crew of an American tugboat boards an abandoned Russian research vessel, the alien life form aboard regards them as a virus which must be destroyed.
Virus is a late-90s sci-fi horror B-movie that blends Alien and The Thing aesthetics with a nautical setting. The premise of an alien entity repurposing human bodies and ship machinery into hybrid killing machines has some visual interest, and the practical creature effects have a certain grubby appeal. However, the plot is formulaic — a small group picked off one by one with minimal character development — and the acting is broadly unremarkable despite a cast including Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland, who both feel underutilized. The cinematography makes reasonable use of the claustrophobic ship environment but is workmanlike rather than inspired. The film offers little that distinguishes it from its obvious influences, and the ending resolves without surprise or resonance.