I imagine the logline for “Infected” was it’s the UK meets “Dawn of the Dead.” Sometimes “Infected” can reach for moments of greatness and almost achieve it, but it’s too concerned with ripping off “The Walking Dead” and Romero to hit that peak. “Infected” is really nothing you haven’t seen before, it’s a movie about the end of the world and zombies taking over the great metropolitan area of the UK. Director Andrew Gilbert follows a trio of characters, all dwindling in size as they struggle to find safety amidst the walking dead.
The dead that are anxiously biting in to necks; that’s about all they do really. They bite in to necks and occasionally eat someone. What I like about “Infected” is that it’s not afraid to kill off characters left and right, opting to shoot someone down who was just kicking ass a few seconds ago. Director Andrew Gilbert follows the path of three sets of characters: footballers, clubbers, and a military group as they struggle to find some semblance of life and head to safety in a school they’ve been told is now a safe haven. When they get there they begin to clash, shocked to find that it’s been deserted and they now have to rely on one another to survive through the apocalypse. When Gilbert and co. decides to side step the bickering and survival arguing, the movie can become very stark and interesting.
I enjoyed watching the groups seal off a school and begin using it as a center for survival. And I especially liked how the group began securing their safe haven, it’s just the movie finds a military brigade and instantly begins building its own Sgt. Rhodes, and then it begins taking a nosedive in quality. “Infected” is about thirty minutes too long to boot, taking thirty whole minutes to establish one set of characters, while the other two sets only get established for ten minutes total. “Infected” isn’t necessarily a bad movie, but it’s one that goes through a ton of storylines and themes we’ve seen a thousand times over in better movies. As an experience and a film it’s merely mediocre, and one that really can be great if it trimmed down its run time and opted for more original story elements, in the end.