Patient Zero sounds good on paper, but don’t watch it. The movie takes great pains to emphasize fairly early in the proceedings that it is not a zombie movie, but a rage virus like 28 Days Later. For some reason, a large cast of majority British people decides to pretend to be Americans in a post-apocalypse world after a rage virus transforms the majority of the human race into homicidal cannibals. One infected man is not completely turned and provides a way for the survivors to communicate with the infected and try to locate the titular character in order to provide a cure, but everything that the survivors know about the infected could be completely wrong and jeopardize the existence of humanity.
I’m going to spoil Patient Zero so if you’re planning on watching it, you should probably stop reading, but it isn’t good so you should keep reading. I love the Mary Shelley twist that the monsters look at the hero as a turncoat that needs to be stopped and are as driven as the human forces to stop what they view as his infection of humanity. I should feel gutted by this revelation and reassess everything that I knew up to that point, but I didn’t because I never really liked the hero. I never watched Doctor Who so I have no reservoir of good will for Matt Smith, and his character’s monologuing and music as torture schtick was annoying so I was happy when he finally got taken down a notch.
It felt like Patient Zero threw an apocalypse just so the hero could have a wife and a side chick and still be considered the good guy. The women are supposed to reflect the duality of his existence as a Blade type infected person. His wife equals the infected side, but simultaneously his carefree human past and his side chick is his human, civilized side, but simultaneously his tortured, present conflicted existence. They are more interesting than he is innately. Did I mention that his side chick is also his doctor, who has been raw dogging him and now is pregnant with his baby? Um, so will the baby be infected or not? Will it wait to attack her when it gets out or start fighting in gestation? Listen, I get that if you put Natalie Dormer in a movie, any guy is going to expect a sex scene, but condoms or at least a brief consideration of the possibility of infection through sexual contact should be discussed in the movie. If a CW show can do it, the head of a scientific, military expedition tasked with protecting humanity should. She is supposed to be humanity’s only hope for finding a cure. Welp. We’re doomed.
Stanley Tucci, did you need the money so badly? Are you building a castle like Jeremy Irons? You’re better than this! His kids must be going to college or something. Tucci gets to have his Sir Anthony Hopkins moment as the Hannibal Lecter of the film, Professor Michael Jensen. He does not appear until the midpoint of the movie, and then after that scene, he makes a brief appearance at the end to literally chew the scenery. I enjoyed it theoretically, but it never quite works because I watch too many movies so when the evil mastermind is a soft spoken, intellectual, it only does so much for me, and by then, I was barely invested in the movie and wanted more of Tucci’s character’s back story. Up to this point, Patient Zero only gave us the present, post apocalypse story and the hybrid infected hero’s flashbacks with neither timeline being that interesting, but the Professor’s back story is more interesting because he views infection as liberating, which means killing his wife and kids, whereas the hero’s best life is barren and boring.
It also doesn’t help that the beginning of Patient Zero is rather diluted. It follows multiple characters, not just the hero, so you’re not sure who the protagonist is until later in the first act. Initially it appears that the movie is a ripoff of Day of the Dead: Bloodline with its setup of the military versus the scientist with the same gendered violent undertones, which in turn is a ripoff of George Romero’s original Day of the Dead, but the movie inflicts whiplash on its audience as it seems to instantly regret reducing its military figure into a brute and hastily makes him a good guy, not a hot head, reflects a lack of understanding of its own characters and the journey that it wants to take us on.
The better protagonist of Patient Zero would have been Janet, the main character’s infected wife whom they are trying to cure. She accepts who she is without forgetting who she was and was a far more nuanced character in the way that she reconciled her two sides. She was never domesticated and always a credible threat so when she acts benevolently, it carries more weight, and her character’s existence provides more narrative tension than the protagonist’s Rube Goldbergian plot, an elaborate excuse for a ménage a trois since connections are seen as a weak aspect of human existence. She is infected and retains her loyalty even at her most violent. She isn’t trying to hold on to a semblance of the past like he is so her future choices are more unpredictable and intriguing than her husband’s. Her husband never has an emotional transformation or journey. Things simply happen around him, but he never changes. She does, and a solid protagonist should always have emotional hills and valleys. Matt briefly calls her Jane so tsk tsk to the continuity editor and actor for messing that up.
Another shout out goes to everyone’s favorite nerd, Sam Tarley from Games of Thrones played by John Bradley. He is the only person that managed to scare me briefly when his instantly affable character begins to turn. Even though his death was predictable, it was too early in the proceedings, and there is no other character that I had a remotely close emotional investment in.
I hate to single someone out for criticism, but Michael Wandmacher, your soundtrack was overbearing and obtrusive. Everything doesn’t have to be big, and while the music should influence my reception of the movie, it felt as if the music was screaming instructions on how I should feel during every scene. The score was dreadful.
Patient Zero definitely begs for a sequel, but be strong movie studios and don’t give it one. The solid premise and excellent cast fooled me into wasting my time and watching this movie, but it is all wasted in execution. Skip it!