Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Ashes (2011)

Little Jesus is wandering along the beach when he decides to play with a washed up jellyfish. Not a good idea since those things can mess you up.  His illegal immigrant family drops him off at the emergency room where he collapses in front of all round good guy Dr. Stanton.

Stanton tries to help Jesus, but can't figure out what is wrong with him.  I'm not sure how easy it is to diagnose a jellyfish sting, but  I guess it must be difficult since Stanton decides the only way to cure Jesus's mystery ailment is to inject him with the experimental vaccine he's been working on.  Granted the vaccine is for Aids and it's still in the trial stage with one patient, but what the heck, may as well see if it can save the kid with the unknown illness.

This proves to be a bad move since the injection causes an  immediate reaction when Jesus clamps his teeth down on the Doc's forearm. Jesus needs to be forcibly removed from Doc's arm and begins to convulse while Stanton rethinks giving Jesus the shot.  The next day the nurse lets the Stanton know Jesus passed away during the night.

Stanton's not down with that, since now he's got to worry that someone will discover he gave the kid  an experimental Aids vaccine which is sure to figure into his demise.  Stanton's already overworked and ignoring his family due to long work hours, plus the experimental research.   And it doesn't help that he's starting to feel woozy from the bite on his arm, which is looking worse and worse. Oh yeah, and he's starting to hallucinate and have nightmares about the kid.

This is a zombie movie in name only.  Stanton keeps getting worse and bodily fluids can spread the virus. So as people get sick, they bite each other and it spreads further. There's also a subplot about the government and their interest in Stanton's research, which as you can imagine is not in the public's best interest.  Dr. Stanton is played by Brian Krause, who I always think of as the guy from the 1992 Stephen King movie, Sleepwalkers.

No comments: