Shudder Film Review - Virus: 32 (2022)

Location is king in this beautifully crafted high concept survival horror from Uruguay.

After fucking up in the co-parenting stakes, abrasive security guard Iris is left with no choice but to take her daughter Tata with her to patrol a sprawling disused leisure complex in Montevideo. However, when a terrifying virus begins to rip through the population the impromptu mummy daughter work night morphs into an intense fight for their lives.

The invading infected are agile, sentient, vicious, and indiscriminate but become immobile for 32 seconds after each spate of violent rage. Iris and Tata must use this to their ultimate advantage if they are to make it out unchomped.

Virus:32 is ensconced in the cantonment of quasi-zombie rabidness. Since 28 Days Later there has been a tangible sea change from the stumbling risen of classic Romero to the kinetic infection of Train To Busan, I Am a Hero, the criminally overlooked La Horde, and more recently the utter insanity of The Sadness.

This shift in gear toward cognitively intact super hunters, whilst totally understandable given the threat viruses represent to humankind, has left many purists considering if these are indeed zombie films at all. Rather a sub-genre born from our struggle with pandemics and a consumer base in need of a faster-moving form of gut-munching gratification.

Whatever the cultural rationale, director Gustavo Hernández has pitched his survivalist shocker in with the zombie evolution, and for the most part, it feels like an organic spike in genre progression. In adding a 32-second reset button to the mix he has freshened up a potentially stale vernacular and afforded himself windows of tense set-piece building into the bargain.

The underrated filmmaker also brings his compositional A-game to the post lockdown party with a vanguard of breath-taking one-take wonders, stunning framing, and flourishes of visual panache. Not only does this make the flick look far more expensive, and expansive, than it actually is, it gives the narrative a thrillingly propulsive aesthetic.

Securing The Neptuno Sports Club as the primary venue was a masterstroke of location scouting. It is the perfect sandbox for the action to unfold. The creepy claustrophobic corridors and vast courts and Olympic size swimming pools mean the encounters can vary in intensity and scale giving the film a layered texture that keeps it invigorated.

Hernández wanted to give Virus:32 an “indoor road movie” vibe. Indeed, as we explore the massive space with our protagonists over the 24-hour timeframe it does feel cavernous enough to evoke the sense of a journey. Iris and Tata become separated early on in the piece further enhancing the jeopardy and character motivation essential to the road movie blueprint.

Although extremely technically polished, the movie doesn’t neglect its exploitation roots with some nasty violence and a resolutely cruel streak. The gore effects are practical and visceral and some of the atrocities showcased are genuinely disturbing. Viewers sensitive to either viciously staged animal abuse or child murder are in for a good hard triggering.

In terms of perspective, the flick has an interesting relationship with COVID-19. Conceived and written well before the pandemic took hold it is chillingly prophetic. Yet production was halted by its grip and so it too, just like the rest of us, became paralysed by its own prediction. Now, of course, it can not help but be viewed through the lingering prism of an all-too-real global shutdown.

Charged with creative largesse, nuanced performances, and penetrative tautness this classy survival picture is a worthy touchstone in the harmonic progression of the infection thriller.