Virus: Exteme Contamination
The latest trailer for Domiziano Cristopharo's Virus: Extreme Contamination has just hit looking (and sounding) fantastic. The Lovecraft story origin appears to be more heavily promoted than before, it is inspired by his 1927 short story 'The Colour out of Space’, and the new trailer seems to be promising zombie fans much more than a simple survival or mad scientist tale. Although that is not to say that from the footage witnessed so far that the film will be wholly unique or supernatural as slight, perhaps admittedly tenuous links may be made by fans to other movies.
The film itself follows an Italian scientist in Kosovo who is studying the impact of a meteorite that has caused a series of peculiar events, including the changing of the inhabitants of a military base into dangerous, mutated creatures. Whether this takes the more conventional, contemporary zombie film angle or plays more into Lovecraftian territory is yet to be seen however with the film having been co-written by director Cristopharo (House of Flesh Mannequins; Red Krokodil; Phantasmagoria) and Cosi Perversa favourite Antonio Tentori (A Cat in the Brain; Symphony in Blood Red; Dracula 3D) and featuring Rimi Beqiri (Il Ritorno Di Elena; Connections; Panopticon) and current Italian b-movie hot property Michael Segal (Apocalypse Z; Zombie Massacre 2; Lion; In Articuolo Mortis) we can be almost certain that this will be a film that delivers the horror goods both on and off camera whichever route it takes.
Meanwhile the music in the new trailer is somewhat reminiscent of that by Umberto for the American made, Italian/Fulci-love in film that was Bombshell Bloodbath, itself a throwback to the glorious eighties. From what we have heard the music for Virus: Extreme Contamination perfectly straddles creepy and atmospheric, with the keys adding a sense of inevitability and impending doom to the sometime grotesque and often tense visuals.
Virus: Extreme Contamination looks set to perfectly combine the old excesses of the Italian zombie first wave with modern sensibilities while the Lovecraft origin is sure to add a level of bizarreness that the film can only benefit from and with a lack of known native competition (Eaters: Rise of the Dead being the only recent Italian zombie film that has made it over here), if Cristopharo can match the quality of his previous films then his unique take on the genre may see him make the definitive modern Italian zombie movie.
You can keep up to date on the film via the official channels: