Pathogen
A dangerous nanochip, used in a disastrous research attempt to cure cancer, finds its way into the water supply of a small town. Soon, the population is turning into zombies and dream plagued middle school student Dannie (Rose Kent-McGlew) may be the world’s only hope.
Filmed in Austin, Texas in 2005 by the then twelve year old Emily Hagins, Pathogen is a surprisingly mature effort. Hagins, the youngest person to receive a grant from the Austin Film Society’s Texas Filmmakers Production Fund, presents some skillfully rendered sequences in her first feature length effort and ultimately became the subject of Zombie Girl: The Movie (www.zombiegirlthemovie.com), a documentary which chronicles her efforts here.
Hagins masterfully tracks the liquid path of the infection in her moody opening moments and eventually rewards patient viewers with a taut, nihilistic ending. Her smart script has occasional nonsensical lapses, but overall this effort is just as professional (if not more so) as many of the productions released by Brain Damage in the last year and a half. If anything, Hagins would probably have benefited from a more seasoned cast. Here, some of her intent is reduced by Pathogen’s enthusiastic yet untried performers.
Still, her mostly inexperienced cast provides some haunting moments. A scene wherein the impossibly sweet looking Jen (a truly effective Estrella Gonzales) blithely pursues and infects fellow student Chloe (Amanda Haight) in an empty classroom is one of the most potently simple horror sequences I have witnessed in a long time. Tony Vespe as the low key Cameron, one of Dannie’s cohorts, also emerges as the coolest, most nonchalant preteen to ever grace the blood splattered silver screen. Alex Schroeder as the enthusiastic yet horribly doomed Stacy, registers with a strong, unaffected presence, too. The adults are well represented by Rebecca Elliott’s Sue, the head researcher and true source of the virus. Elliott ably anchors the younger cast members and provides a uniformly professional air to the proceedings.
The gore hounds among us can also expect to be treated to a nasty eye removal, a nicely effective penultimate beheading and a truly taut supermarket showdown that accomplishes in mere moments what the recent, widely released version of Stephen King’s The Mist took hours to do.
Hagins has a true future in horror (and in filmmaking, in general) and those lucky enough to experience the lasting effects of Pathogen will be able to proudly proclaim that they were there from the beginning. But, please, chant after me - “Bottled water only! Bottled water only!”
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