Mutants

A horrifying mutation has started to take effect on humans with a handful not yet infected trying to deal with the crisis as it ensues. But will anyone be able to escape?

**½ / *****

I think horror fans will know exactly what they are getting into as we see a woman running (from “something” in the woods) out into the road, turning around, and being hit by a speeding ambulance (to say she goes SPLAT is an understatement). The ambulance carries someone seemingly dying by a mutation that is thriving within his body, as the paramedics deal with a demanding and volatile passenger pointing a gun at them. This woman, hostile and full of attitude, seems to have an agenda. She’s with the army and her partner (she shoots him once the mutation within him kills him) must have encountered the disease at some point prior to our introduction to him. The paramedics (and lovers) decide they have no choice but to trust her…that and she has military weapons that could protect or harm them depending on the mental state of this soldier.

 

Mutants is ultimately a formulaic fight-for-survival picture. Not unlike zombie films, you can substitute the undead with ghastly mutated humans who barely resemble what they once were. Bald, faces with slight human features but with a visage looking as if barely formed in clay, eyes of blackness devoid of the personalities and humanity once behind them now only reflecting the savage that shows itself in their sharp teeth, and a ferocity in guttural tone sounding off as these mutants pursue prey not yet succumbed to the disease.

 

Well, Sonia, the film’s heroine, uses “contamination” to describe the diseased. So I guess that is the apt description. NOAH base is the “nirvana” survivors seek as refuge from contamination. After contacting the base, Sonia believes a rescue helicopter will come for her and Marcus soon. The crazy military woman wouldn’t allow an autistic teenager to come with them, and an ensuing melee erupts as she shoots him, hitting Marcus, too, multiple times. Nursing Marcus back to health (helping him with his gunshot wounds) after putting down the soldier for her frenzied gunfire, Sonia hopes their lives will be better when rescue arrives.

Marcus, when shot, seems to have contracted the contamination, and the film follows his descent into a mutant. Hair falling out, the mania, constant blood vomiting, manic mood swings, restlessness, and loss of control. Marcus just wants to die before he becomes a total mutant. At first not wanting anything to do with murdering her beloved, Sonia decides to concede because of his agony. She seems to indicate to Marcus that she will stop his heart, but basically just injects him with a knock-out drug. Locked in a cell while unconscious, Marcus transitions gradually into a mutant monster as Sonia deals with unwelcome visitors entering the hospital uninvited.

Hélène de Fougerolles, as a lot of female actresses in French horror these days it seems, as Sonia is up against seemingly insurmountable odds. With those odds stacked against her (stuck in a contaminated sector, as her lover transforms into a mutant, with unsavory sorts soon to besiege her along with other diseased infected outside the hospital she holds up in the surrounding countryside), Sonia waits in hope that NOAH will soon show up to assist her in her time of desperate need. With the customary self-serving, thuggish thieves (Marie-Sohna Conde and Nicolas Briançon), injured innocent (Luz Mandon), and practically mute, intense (but ultimately brave and admirable) tag-along (Dris Ramdi) showing up towards the middle of the film to interact with Sonia, this follows behind the likes of 28 Days Later. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, and loved ones are infected, suffer the physiological change, and turn primal / carnivorous. For melodramatic purposes, Marco, despite his change, has a semblance of humanity (even if slight) that allows him to halt a mutant from truly harming Sonia, although at the very end the monster he has become is just too difficult to rein in. Sonia has no choice left to her but to accept the inevitable and put her beloved out of his misery. As you might expect with a zombie film, the mutants will eventually gather in number and raid the hospital as Sonia tries to free herself from the brute with a shotgun and his vile squeeze, both of which are only interested in taking whatever is available to them to steal. Seeing the thug kicks a pregnant woman like Sonia (carrying Marcus’ child in another plot complication used for extra melodrama), when he gets his just desserts, karma does seems to literally bite him. That he’s willing to sacrifice his squeeze to save his own skin shouldn’t surprise anybody watching this. Typically in these movies, there is always a character that reveals the darkside of humanity when a global crisis envelopes society. Marie-Sohna Conde and Nicolas Briançon are these two cretins.

Another convenient plot development has Sonia immune to the contamination, as a bite two weeks prior to when the story begins in the film proves she is safe from turning into a monster herself. This provides us with at least one character we can feel somewhat sure has a chance to survive the situation addressed in the film. That doesn’t mean Sonia doesn’t endure her share of hell…she has her share of nightmarish encounters and the danger never ceases. I think the film does a swell job of allowing us to see the beginning of the contamination to its conclusion in the case of Marcus and the effect his mutation has on Sonia. The scene where he’s covered in blood as Sonia attempted to “cure him” with her uninfected blood is all kinds of creepy. His chasing her around while unable to defy the mutation taking his humanity away is definitely a dramatic arc exploited well for effect. The leads are good, and the flesh-wound effects are first-rate. The mutants are the thing of nightmares which is the point…you wouldn’t want to know that these things (once resembling mankind) are somewhere in the dark or around the corner. Still, the film won’t smack you upside the head with startling complications you won’t see coming. The plotting is business as usual.