The 1999 science fiction horror film Virus, directed by visual effects designer John Bruno, has a cult following today. With a star-studded ensemble that includes industry giants like Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, Joanna Pacula, and William Baldwin, Virus follows the 90s vogue of sea-based sci-fi horror films.
In the 1990s, Hollywood was suddenly flooded with films set underwater, including DeepStar Six, Leviathan, and The Abyss, to mention a few. The virus is not situated underwater, despite the fact that it is set in this environment. In some ways, it reminds me of films like Lake Placid and Anaconda, in which the main cast battles a huge foe in the sea. However, because Virus is a science fiction horror film, the opponents are far more dangerous than snakes and crocodiles.
The film is based on the same-named comic book series. The virus was written by Chuck Pfarrer and published by Dark Horse Comics, a well-known comic book and manga publisher. A terrifying extraterrestrial life form hijacks a Chinese Navy ship and reconfigures it in this story. It then creates diverse creatures from the crew’s dead bodies and the vessel’s broken electronics, resulting in grotesque beings that are both biological (i.e. human) and inorganic (stemming from the electronic side). As a second ship arrives on the scene to help, the new crew is forced to fight these life forms and preserve themselves.
The Virus in Bruno’s film tries to transform humanity into cyborg slaves, akin to what Starro the Conqueror did in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad, except they were not quite cyborgs. Because the contemporary generation is still a long way from being overrun by robots, it is startling how science fiction films from the twentieth century misjudged technical progress. Instead, the biggest issue in the first world is the iPhone’s short battery life.
When the film was first developed, it was expected to create quite a stir in the box office due to its high budget, VFX, and cast. With high expectations for the film’s performance, an action figure line was created and used for marketing and promotion. However, the film’s release date was pushed back from the summer of 1998 to January 1999, which proved to be a mistake because Virus went on to be a commercial flop.
A ragged crew at sea has their cargo and tugboat wrecked by a typhoon in this film. The crew transfers to a larger ship nearby, the Volkov, which was previously a Russian research vessel (unlike the one in the comics where we see a Chinese research vessel). Just a week ago, this spacecraft was hit by a nasty extraterrestrial alien energy source, and the crew has been missing ever since. As the new team seeks to figure out what happened in the Volkov, they are up against a terrible foe hell-bent on annihilating humanity.
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Deep Rising With An E-Villain? What Goes Down In Volkov?
The movie begins with the Russian research vessel Volkov sailing through the South Pacific. Its crew attempts to communicate with Mir, an orbiting space station. One of the crew members in Mir spots a massive light coming towards it. It strikes Mir and kills the astronauts. Then, the energy source beams down to Volkov and causes an electrical surge. The crew is subsequently attacked and the energy takes over the mainframe computer.
A week later, the tugboat Sea Star sails through a typhoon in the South Pacific Ocean. It is captained by Robert Everton (played by Donald Sutherland) who evidently has an alcohol problem, something very common for sailors to have. The typhoon causes the engine room to get flooded. Captain Everton loses his uninsured cargo as well. As Sea Star gets to the eye of the storm, they decide to take the opportunity and make repairs. Lost in the ocean, Squeaky uses the radio to find help when Foster (played by Jaime Lee Curtis) spots Volkov on the radar.
Everton, who is now trying to kill himself, probably because he just went through the exponential loss of fortune due to his cargo going poof in the sea, is notified about the new ship. Foster finds out that it’s a ship for tracking missiles and satellites. They check the insides of the vessel and find it to be deserted and almost a mess, just like your room except Everton realizes that the ship is possibly worth millions in salvage, unlike the spare bottles in your room.
The crew goes aboard and Squeaky accompanies the engineer Steve (played by William Baldwin) in restoring power to Volkov. They also talk some crap about Everton in the process but as soon as they turn the generator on, Foster falls victim to a terrible sound as sparks fly from the electrical circuits. The sound stops but the electronics begin to act on its own. It makes an anchor fall on Sea Star, taking the ship down while Hiko and J.W. Woods somehow manage to survive. As Steve leaves the engine room to save a drowning Hiko, a robotic creature with electronic spider legs kills Squeaky. Sid’s spider-baby from Toy Story might not have killing abilities but it still looks way more frightening than this one.
As the crew treats Hiko in the sickbay, a masked entity enters the room and attacks everyone. Steve makes the attacker unconscious and unmasks the person. Turns out, it is Nadia Vinogradova (played by Joanna Pacula), the sole survivor from the Volkov crew.
Richie and Woods walk through a dark area searching for Squeaky when they stumble into a room full of weapons and bombs. A machine making weird noises pops out in front of them and Richie shoots it, taking the thing down. Unable to find Squeaky, Steve goes to search for him.
Meanwhile, Nadia tells Everton that the crew had to shut down the generators because that’s what ‘it’ was getting its power of traveling through the ship from. She also tells them that her crew is dead and runs away after pushing Everton. Foster chases after her and reassures her that they wouldn’t hurt her. Nadia then tells her about the attack at Mir which destroyed Volkov and its 300 members. It took over the system and began to learn about it by itself, making the machines enemies of the people. You know, just your average girl talk. Foster thinks Nadia has gone nuts.
Richie and Woods enter a room where machines are seen acting by themselves. It attacks them with iron nails. If Nobara Kugisaki from Jujutsu Kaisen created a machine, this would be it. Woods senses a weird smell when a half-human half-machine cyborg attacks them in the automated workshop. Fortunately, they kill the cyborg.
Everton blames Nadia for Squeaky’s absence as well as for the anchor falling on Hiko. She tells him that he can kill her if he wants to but he had to turn the power supply off otherwise everyone would die. Just then, Richie and Woods bring the body of the cyborg to the room. Nadia recognizes it to be her husband and the captain of Volkov. She tells the crew that the energy that killed them scanned the computers to find out ways to kill humans and used the automated workshops to use the dead people and turn them into cyborgs. They are skeptical about believing Nadia but suddenly, the ship is faced with another typhoon. This time, the crew realizes that the ship is sailing itself and saving it from the typhoon so maybe Nadia isn’t lying after all.
They head for the computer room, looking for Squeaky, and find him, but he’s a cyborg now. Plus, he is here with another big robot that is immune to bullets. It kills Woods. The others go to a different room and lock themselves in. Richie tries to use the radio to contact help but Everton can’t stop being a greedy scumbag and shoots the radio because getting help would mean that they wouldn’t get the salvage money. Foster attacks Everton and takes over the command of the crew. He had it coming.
The crew uses the computer to ask the alien. It tells them that it is ‘aware’ and wants to kill humans because it considers mankind to be a virus (I mean, is it wrong though?). The machine plans to use humans as spare parts to create cyborgs. Richie loses his mind over this, guns down Squeaky, and flees. The rest of the crew leave the room to find the main computer and drown the ship but Everton stays back. He takes the opportunity to interact with the Intelligence and claims himself to be the ‘dominant life form’.
The crew realizes that the Intelligence has moved the mainframe computer somewhere else. They get ambushed by the big robot which was with Squeaky. They try to escape to the bridge but Hiko ends up dying.
Everton bargains with the Intelligence and they join forces. Meanwhile, Foster realizes that the sentient alien wants Volkov to reach Lord Howe Island. Nadia identifies that it wants to seize a British intelligence station in order to get its hands on the world’s military forces. They decide to sink the ship but Everton, who is now a cyborg, attacks them. They use a thermite hand grenade to blow him and empty the fuel tanks of the vessel to aid its explosion.
Foster, Nadia, and Steve meet up with Richie where they are attacked by another giant robot. It is piloted by the Intelligence itself, which means that if life was a video game, this would be the Boss LvL. It captures Foster to get intel on the explosive detonator’s location. Richie gets fatally wounded in the chase and informs Steve about him having prepared an ejection seat that can be used as an escape pod.
Steve and Nadia rescue Foster and Nadia fire a flare gun at a gas tank to destroy the Intelligence. But as she was quite close to the tank, she sacrificed herself in the process. Foster and Steve use the ejection seat to escape and it triggers a ginormous explosion. Volkov sinks and a U.S. naval ship rescues Foster and Steve.
Virus flopped both critically and commercially, to the point that it grossed below half of its production budget. Due to underlit cinematography, unoriginal plot, and predictability, film critics left no stones unturned in bashing this sea-set movie.
Jaime Lee Curtis herself is not a fan of this movie and considers it to be dreadful, to the point that she tried to get John Bruno fired because that’s just how much she hated it. However, this does not negate the fact that the movie is a cult classic today. As one of the movies belonging to the famous ‘in the sea’ category of sci-fi horrors, Virus has a fan following who are prolific lovers of this particular niche and it delivers to its target audience in every way.
An extraterrestrial adversary? Check. A star-studded cast? Check. An exciting plotline? Check. A villain with a sinister motive? Check. Great special effects? Of course, check, as Bruno himself is a VFX artist.
It is not wrong to say that the movie is predictable and similar to the 1998 flick Deep Rising in quite a number of ways but there is something in familiarity that draws the audience towards it every time. Think of chick flick movies or high school dramas. They often have very similar plot points with a popular set of high school kids who run the school and have rich parents. And the reason why they tend to be similar is that that’s what people want. The same can be said for Virus, which is probably the main reason why it has a cult following.
The Intelligence: Explained!
The Intelligence or the extraterrestrial force that caused Mir and Volkov to get destroyed is the primary antagonist in Virus. It was adapted from Chuck Pfarrer’s 1992 Dark Horse comic of the same name i.e. Virus.
It has one goal: the eradication of humanity by turning people into cyborgs. The alien here is not an organic being or creature and instead, a non-organic program that takes over the electronics in Volkov. In some ways, it is similar to Ultron from Marvel. Both are programs that deem the human race to be problematic and both took over their surrounding technology, in the case of Virus it was the automated machines and computers of Volkov and in the case of Ultron, it was J.A.R.V.I.S and the Iron Legion.
In Virus, the Intelligence is a sentient being with awareness, as seen in the scene where the crew interacts with the program. As it analyses humans, it comes to the conclusion that the human race is ‘destructive, invasive, noxious, and harmful to the body of the whole’. It considers mankind to be a virus that must be eradicated.
The comics and the movie differ in what is considered to be the virus. In Pfeffer’s work, the alien is the Virus, which makes sense because it takes over the cyber system of Volkov and spreads itself throughout the framework in a very short period of time. This is similar to how fast a virus spreads in society, which is a very real comparison to make due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the movie, The Intelligence refers to mankind as Virus and that makes sense in its own way as humans have populated the Earth like a virus, stealing and exploiting its resources, ruining the planet, causing wars, problems, and a terrible climate crisis.
Anatomically, Intelligence is made out of electrical energy with no physical body, as seen from the very first scene when Mir is attacked by an energy source. However, this energy source is less of an attack beam used by another source as it is a life-form in itself. It can travel distances in space and does not require oxygen to do so. It is encapsulated in blue and purple lightning bolts. Its form allows it to travel through the electrical circuits of Earth with ease, making it dangerous since this way it can get access to the databases without effort and learn everything it would need to know to bring mankind to its knees.
As a highly intelligent being, it readily learns what it needs to do to kill the crew in the ship. After attacking Mir, it beams down to the Russian research vessel of Volkov and attacks the entire crew, where everyone dies except Nadia. It only takes a few hours to know everything it can about the technology available on the Russian vessel.
As Volkov was a ship that specialized in tracking down missiles and satellites, the Intelligence got access to high-end Russian technology and took over the entire system. Later, Foster and Nadia realized that the Intelligence was steering Volkov to Lord Howe Island where it wanted to use a British intelligence system to take over the world’s military forces. So clearly, its ambitions were big and it desired more and more power to fulfill its objectives.
It uses the knowledge it gathered on humans and electronics to turn the dead people into cyborgs by fusing them with one another. And what’s even more incredible about its abilities is that these cyborgs almost bring humans back to life but without any of the humanity. It infuses its sentience into its creations, giving them more of a realistic character instead of creating robots that look dead. It can be deduced that after gaining knowledge of people, Intelligence decided to eradicate mankind, like Ultron, but that would not explain why it attacked in the first place. So the being having already made up its mind about destroying humans before attacking is a more plausible option in this scenario.
Its high efficiency in maneuvering through human technology allows it to operate anything mechanical. It uses several drones to lure the crew from Sea Star into the room with the computer, where it proves itself to be aware and intelligent enough to communicate with humans as its voice resonates throughout the room. Its voice is, of course, super mechanical, sounding almost like a pitched down but muffled Batman voice which has been autotuned. Its human-machine hybrid creations are probably closer to its own kind. These hybrids come in various forms that vary in shapes and sizes but they all have the same objective of killing humans and the same composition of being a fusion between man and machine.
During its conversation with the crew, Richie asked what it wanted from humans. To this, the Intelligence said that it wanted viscous neurological transmitters, oxygenated tissues, organs, brain matter, and certain nerves and muscles from the human body. These are the components it used to fuse with the machines to create its cyborgs. However, as they were created from dead bodies, the cyborgs had a foul stench while the appearance of the humans was decayed and grotesque.
Even though its creations had a form, the Intelligence inhabited the computers in the ship, like Doctor Zola from Captain America. But unlike Zola, the Intelligence never had an Earthly form and always belonged to space. It is not known whether it was once an organic being or not but that could be possible. However, having experience as an Earthly being would make more sense for it to resent mankind as a whole.
As powerful as it might be, it was fairly easy to ‘defeat’. As it traveled through electrical circuits, all one had to do to stop it was to cut off the power to the technology it had inhabited, which is why Nadia constantly tried to persuade the crew into switching off the generator. Losing its connection to the mainframe computer would cause the Intelligence to lose its control over its drones. Severed cables force the alien to relocate to a different drone after one ceases to function.
Explosives and water could take it down as it had become an electrical entity. Water destroys technology and explosions destroy the entire thing so using explosives to cause Volkov to sink was the ideal ending for the movie.
The Intelligence created several forms in Virus. It extended its consciousness into the machines and with that, controlled its creations. They were almost like its slaves and servants.
Gatherers
It created machines that resemble insects and are particularly small in size. These machines were small enough to scurry through the ship and scout for supply so that the Intelligence could build more well-rounded, powerful robots and cyborgs. They also come with built-in weapons such as nail guns, drills, and small saws. One such spider-machine creature had killed Squeaky. But that one was purely mechanical with no human in the mix. Some other designs of gatherers incorporated human organics into it.
Cyborgs
The Intelligence combined machine parts with human corpses to create these cyborgs. Cyborgs in general are man-machine hybrids (think Cyborg from DC Comics). Instead of using organics in this creation, the Intelligence used the entire body of the dead crew members. The members do not necessarily need to be dead though, as seen in the scene where a cyborg of Everton attacks Foster and the others. So it can turn people into cyborgs without killing them. However, the Intelligence killed the crew as it considers humans to be destructive.
These cyborgs have a power source in their brains. The Intelligence helps keep it alive.
Golems
These are robots that are bigger than the Gatherers and Cyborgs. In fact, they are 7 feet in the comics. They have four arms and legs with human muscles wrapped around them, like Four Arms the alien from Ben 10. They are extremely strong and can tear through metal with little to no effort.
Goliath
Towards the climactic scene, it creates a high-end cybernetic body for itself as it attacks Foster. The height of this being is 9 feet and it is heavily armed and armored with the equipment it got on the ship. The Goliath has four spider-like legs with a humanoid top with four arms. In a way, it is similar to most of the other creations of Intelligence and is like a hybrid of them all. It needed to be attached to cables to have a constant source of power as it is literally a monstrosity.
In the comics, the vessel becomes a new home for the Intelligence.
The reason why the Intelligence wanted to destroy mankind is not known. There must be a reason why it resented mankind to such a large extent. If it does not have experience on Earth, it could possibly be man’s creation itself. Maybe a person who strives to eradicate humanity to restore balance on Earth is behind the creation of this energy source. As it is sentient, this could just be a bio-weapon.
Instead of a human, it could be another alien life form that created the Intelligence to destroy humanity on Earth. Man being a virus might just be an excuse and they could have the objective to colonize Earth.
If created by humans, the talk about wanting to destroy humanity could be an over-exaggeration. Instead, it is possible that the Intelligence was created to destroy certain countries in particular. However, as seen with technology and artificial intelligence, misinterpretations are quite common so it went on a rampage, wanting to destroy any human that came in its way.
Is The Virus A Prequel To The Matrix?
When making a correlation to Virus, people are likely to bring up the 1998 action horror film Deep Rising. The two films are similar in various ways and critics have often labeled them as the same movie. In both movies, we see boats sailing through the Pacific Ocean. They come across a larger vessel that seems to be deserted. Both the ships have been overrun by a vicious adversary and storms are prevalent throughout both settings. However, a deeper dive into the nature of the sentient creature brings about another comparison with the iconic movie The Matrix.
The Matrix came out in March 1999, approximately two months after Virus. In The Matrix, the machine consciousness known as Agent Smith refers to humanity as a virus, similar to The Intelligence. Where Virus shows the Intelligence going haywire through the circuit system, determined to take over the electronic circuits of other countries, it does not gloss over what would happen if it succeeded in its mission. In The Matrix, we see that machines have taken over and humanity is a slave to them.
As Virus ends with the Volkov being destroyed by an explosion and the ship sinking, it leads the audience to believe that the threat is over. However, Intelligence is an entity from outer space. Even though the electronics will definitely get destroyed in this situation, the Intelligence can survive in the vacuum of space with no oxygen. So it may be possible for it to survive underwater, it is a highly advanced being after all. As a new ship arrives at the scene after the destruction of Volkov, the Intelligence might take over the new vessel and propagate itself through the electronic circuits. The Matrix opens with mankind that has been already subjugated to the technology running amok, so it is possible that the Intelligence somehow managed to fulfill its objective of spreading out throughout the world and subsequently turning humans into batteries.
This can be contradicted though, as Morpheus from The Matrix explains in a scene how humanity rejoiced in the early 21st century following the creation of AI, which negates the hypotheses that Intelligence wreaked havoc as it gained power. The theory is imperfect but there are some similarities between the two movies which make this a possible situation as the creatures in Virus are sort of similar to the robots in the early version of Matrix. The Intelligence speaking about humanity was also very similar to how Agent Smith described humanity. Not just the words but also the tone. There’s also a part where Agent Smith mentions the phrase, “During my time here..”. This raises the question, where did it come from? Well, it could’ve actually come from anywhere but these correlations with Virus makes it an interesting theory.
Agreed, humanity being a virus is not a very unique concept used by Pfeffer as this is a common perspective extraterrestrial antagonists have had in the course of science fiction. However, nothing is ever truly original. Songs inspire other songs, concepts inspire other concepts, literature inspires more literature, and movies inspire more movies. It is common for industries to drop some Easter Eggs here and there, correlating the movies in its verse to one another. This has been done in Disney as well as in Quentin Tarantino’s movies so it would not be too insane for science fiction movies to follow a little bit of this pattern to an extent.
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