"Strain 100" (2020)

by Mike Imboden

Normally here at “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict”, both Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. However, here and there they will be taking the reins in a solo outing. For this installment, it’s Mike with a solo review of Strain 100, a “chilling horror-adventure” from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Synopsis

After surviving a terrifying car crash, a young woman discovers that aggressive, flesh-eating zombies have overtaken the entire area. She must figure out what is happening and why in hopes of escaping her horrifying circumstances.

The Good

With the plethora of indie zombie movies available, every little thing you can do to make yours stand out is important, so making the cause of the zombie outbreak an unintended side-effect of a wonder drug intended to stop the flu is an interesting one and the main thing that made Strain 100 catch my eye.

The acting by Jemma Dallender (I Spit on Your Grave 2), as main character Jesse is pretty good. The range she’s tasked with covering helps her performance stand out from the rest of the cast.

Finally, while not used as much as they could have been, some of the practical effects are quite well done and give the zombies a very horrific presence and wounds look believably lethal and gruesome.

The Bad

Sadly, Strain 100’s bad elements vastly outweigh the good ones. The rather major plot point of the vaccine-cum-viral trigger seems to be all but abandoned. An interesting hook like that should have been front and center and might have helped to punch up an otherwise boring and repetitive plot that ends up being another take on the same run-gun-hide-repeat plot we’ve seen too many times already.

The scripting and dialogue is adequate at best and not helped in any part by the wooden performances by the majority of the cast. Some ham-fisted editorializing about guns and God are out of place and clumsily forced into situations where the topics only come across as vocal filler.

Writing and acting aside, Strain100's reliance on poorly executed CGI effects is its biggest flaw, which is a shame because, as mentioned, when the blood and gore is done practically it’s actually pretty good, but identical arterial sprays, the choice to not just break a real window, PlayStation 2 quality explosions, and more only to serve to shine a light on the low budget the producers had.

Also - having a gun expert on set or at least access to a laptop and YouTube would have gone a long way towards helping the actors handle the firearms a little more realistically.

The Verdict

If your goal is to watch every zombie ever made, you won’t want to miss this. If you got tired of low-budget flicks trying to cash in on the zombie craze that seemed to peak during the fourth or fifth season of The Walking Dead, you might be interested if for no reason other than to confirm your beliefs.

It’s not that Strain 100 is a terrible movie, it’s just not any better than things that have come before it have been.

Strain 100, from Uncork’d Entertainment, is available digitally on April 11th, 2023

Strain 100