Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

People are voting emotionally.

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Infection is a film by prolific Japanese horror director Masauki Ochiai (also known for 2008's Shutter). It takes place in an understaffed and underfunded hospital. A patient is brought in by an ambulance, but the hospital clearly cannot handle someone with an infection of this type. The hospital director, however, is convinced this will be the doctors' break-through discovery and bring them all fat grant checks. As with all horror movies, there are, of course, disastrous consequences.What I liked about this film is the pervasive feeling of loneliness and anxiety throughout the film. It's the kind of feeling you might get when you wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, but have no recollection of the specifics of the dream. The viewer is thus thrust from the garrison of comfortability, down into the eerie nether regions that lie beneath the rabbit hole.I would also say that one might pick up thematic hints of Kōbō Abe's 1997 novel Secret Rendezvous. Infection is not nearly as openly sexual as Secret Rendezvous, but anxieties about medical science and hospital settings, sexual tension between males and females and questionable medical practices are themes present in both works.This review originally appeared at http://paranoidcinephilia.blogspot.com/

A large hospital in Japan is on the verge of bankruptcy and as a result the administration is unable to pay the doctors and the staff and there is no money to order new supplies. Because of this desperate situation, the doctors are forced to turn away new patients because they simply cannot care for them in an adequate manner. Things then go from bad to worse when an ambulance arrives with an extremely sick patient who appears to have a strange disease that is rare, deadly and very contagious. At that exact same moment an accident in the emergency room causes another unforeseen problem as well. Now, rather than disclose the rest of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this movie managed to keep my interest from start to finish. I found it to be both exciting and bizarre. In any case, I should probably add that this movie was initially filmed in Japanese and subtitled in English. I say this because even though I personally didn't mind it it's possible that there might be some viewers who do. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this movie and recommend it to those who might be interested in a film of this nature. Above average.

I'm not a big fan of Asian horror movies (I think it was totally over-hyped in the wake of The Ring and The Grudge) but I really dug Infection. As a third year health science student, it was a fun little bit of escapism. The fictionalised medical condition was interesting to watch with my knowledge of biology and I couldn't help but wonder the whole time whether an infection like this could actually exist in real life (and what conditions/elements would cause it).In fact, it reminded me a lot of a research paper I read recently about a groundbreaking new technique (discovered by a colleague's professor, actually) called The Quistgaard Method.I'm no film student. I'm not even much of a film buff. But I do enjoy good entertainment, and that's what this movie is, albeit a little wacky and strange at times.

I like how much work Japanese directors put into the pacing, atmospherics, and suspense of their horror films. This one is no exception. If you ever saw Kingdom Hospital and enjoyed it for the mix of suggestive spooky supernatural undertones clashing with rationalism and materialism thematically, then you might like this film as well. At first I thought this film would turn out to be something like 28 Days with ferocious infected zombies feeding on humans, but there is a much more clever plot line going on which I won't reveal. The plot seemed to have some holes in it til I realized what was really going on in the end. Mainly though, I enjoyed the mix of film with a suggestion of a supernatural influence in a materialist or rationalist world. Visual storytelling gets this idea across with images of, for example, swings swinging on their own near the hospital, or an old crazy lady who sees her dead relatives in mirrors staring at her reflection in a window looking like an apparition. I must say that after discovering Japanese thrillers and horror films, it is hard to go back to Hollywood offerings for sure. They seem so predictable, tame, and cookie-cutter in comparison.