Going into 'Pandemic' (2016) I had absolutely no idea what it was going to be like apart from what I had learnt from the synopsis on Amazon Prime. My only incling was that it was going to be your basic run of the mill virus makes people into violent zombies film. I was wrong with the run of the mill part, unfortunately this was not to the benefit of myself or the film. The film is set in the near future where a deadly virus has the ravaged the earth leaving only a small group of survivors. One of these survivors is Dr. Lauren Chase (Rachel Nichols) who is tasked with leaving the safety of the facility where the survivors are housed to find survivors and attempt to find a possible cure. She is joined on her mission by Wheeler (Alfie Allen), Denise (Missi Pyle) and Gunner (Mekhi Phifer). All have secrets that come to the fore during their mission which test their relationships and cause them to be put in to situations where they must fight for their lives.
The narrative of this film is nothing new. It is a pretty standard narrative that you have seen in loads of these type of films before and it doesn't really bring anything new to it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yeah the story is one you have seen before, but if its a good story and it is told an interesting and engaging way than this isn't really a problem. Unfortunately, this film is not engaging and this is mostly down to the films gimmick which I will get to soon. First I wanted to mention the film's special effects. The practical side of the special effects are decent and there are a couple of fun gore moments in which these effects are at the fore and they look pretty good. The CGI effects are piss poor, but there are not many uses of it and even when it is it is usually shrouded in darkness so the shoddy effects are hidden. But now we get to the gimmick. This film could have had a decently interesting narrative and top notch special effects and I still would have hated it because of this gimmick. Basically the filmmakers decided it would be a good idea to only use real world cameras to tell the story. What I mean by this is cameras that exist in the world of the film; mobile cameras, cctv cameras, etc. For this gimmick it mostly uses cameras that are mounted on the characters helmets making the perspective of the film first person. That's right, this is basically 'Call of Duty Zombies' the film and it fucking sucks. I clocked on that this was going to be how the film was shot early on and my heart sank. The gimmick basically makes the film unwatchable at times. If you think camera shake is bad in found footage films this one turns that up ten fold. Any time there is any action you can barely make out what is happening because the characters are moving around so much and so fast that there is no focus on anything. It felt like if I was just watching a normal film and constantly shaking my head back and forth. It is an awful way of shooting your film and I genuinely couldn't watch the film at times because of it. Maybe it is a gimmick that would work for a short film, but for a feature length film it is a terrible, terrible idea.
The acting in the film is also pretty shoddy. It isn't horrendous but it isn't all that great either and seeing as these actors have all been good in other stuff I put this down more to bad direction. Rachel Nichols is probably the pick of the bunch as Lauren Chase, but even she isn't great. All the actors seem to be at their best when they are asked to shout and scream and at their worst when asked to show some genuine emotion. Missi Pyle, who plays Denise, comes to mind when saying this for one particular scene. This is a scene where Lauren reveals her secret (which I won't spoil here despite the fact none of you are going to watch this) to Denise. Missi Pyle's reaction to this news is wooden and kind of laughable. I don't know what her facial expression is meant to be but whatever it is she is showing a lot of teeth. It looks a bit like a great white shark is trying to look sad. Alfie Allen puts in the worst performance in the film but I actually put a lot of this down to the terrible writing his character has. This is not a real excuse as I don't think the dialogue is so bad as to give the actor no chance, but it probably wouldn't have helped. Do you know what else I blame though? This fucking god awful gimmick. Yeah I'm not going to shut up about it. It is horrendous and ruined any chance the film had of being not just enjoyable but watchable.
'Pandemic' is a film that I just could not stand almost immediately after it started. The narrative is nothing new and so there is nothing interesting there to grab onto and although the production design and practical effects are decent they're not stellar. The acting is also not all that good despite the talent that the film does have. But the most heinous aspect of this film is that goddamn gimmick. First person? Really? It is genuinely awful. I'm really unsure if anything I can say can really get across how crap the gimmick really is. I'm definitely not going to recommend this film. If you want a similar experience to this go and play Halo or something, that would be much more fun.