This movie promises to weave together 10 strangers as they are impacted by a toxic fungal infection that kills anyone exposed to it.

An interesting set up. I like connected storytelling as an idea. One story, ten strangers. Ok, let’s get started.

The movie opens with a man in a hazmat suit collecting samples of what looks like a nasty fungus. He then finds a tent that looks abandoned. When he unzips it, a nasty putrefied body is revealed. As he collects a sample from the dead body, it animates and grabs him. As he tries to pull away his mask slips and the dead body expels a wet nasty mass of spores at the hazmat dude. He staggers away, trying to reposition his mask. But it’s too late, he has obviously been infected. He wanders around a bit before collapsing.

Enter the second stranger. A photographer out looking for interesting things to take pics of. While rummaging through an abandoned house, he winds up getting hurt. Heads back to his place and winds up getting infected by hazmat suit guy. The photographer manages to get in his vehicle and start driving. He picks up a hitchhiker who doesn’t notice that he is massively infected and becoming a fungus. He then infects her. 

The movie keeps going this way. Falling into this weird pattern of introducing a new person that we don’t really get to see much of, then they get infected. The pattern of vignettes actually starts being more of a negative to the story than the interesting concept it started with. 

Until we get to a woman hiding in her closet from a dead man in her bedroom that is infected. Her son arrives and the two of them leave. Turns out he is a doomsday prepper to a degree. They go to where he has some supplies. His nieces are there and infected and come after them, but they escape. Until they pause driving and he gets attacked but the mom gets away. 

We visit a woman holed up in a garage. A little vague here on the setup. Because they imply that the garage is a free standing structure she has turned into a safe space. But a dude randomly opens the door and barges in on her. (Did she not bother to lock the door?) He is trying to find shelter, but has left his wife somewhere. He finally agrees to leave, but finds his wife right outside. The woman locked up the door behind him as he stepped out. But she reluctantly opens up to let him and his wife in. But she is infected and he becomes infected in his attempt to save her. The woman whose garage it was flees. During this vignette, we see that there is more to this infection that just a virus killing people. The wife who died birthed a monster from her back not unlike the chestburster in Alien. And there is a sheep sized “mouth” outside the garage. I guess what the “backburster” will grow into. 

The movie ends with garage girl driving away and coming across the mother of the doomsday prepper on the road. Apparently they know each other and the mother gets in the car.

This movie felt like a bunch of vignettes that might have been part of an expanded web series for the show Last of Us. Walking Dead had done that at one point. But this has no connection to Last of Us. And just winds up being a 91 minute slog with no pay off. The most interesting part of it all was the big mouth creature outside the garage. But before that we had been shown one of the nieces of the prepper (from behind so we didn’t see much) had her face split open like a creature from Stranger Things. When this happened I was interested and confused. Because the spore infection was just deadly infection. But now, suddenly, someone is not dead and a carrier, but some sort of monster. Hmmm. Then when we see the giant mouth outside the garage it gets more confusing. Because there is no rhyme or reason to what is happening. Oh yeah, also there was a scene where the body of the hazmat suit guy had his head split open and his brain crawled away. Perhaps this was meant to be the birth of the giant mouth creature. But why wasn’t every dead body birthing brain mouths? And why wasn’t every dead body birthing backbursters? There was no cohesive plan about the story. 

Honestly, strip the backburster out. Strip the niece that has her face split open out. Go back to the beginning. Have the dead body in the tent with a brain mouth zipped in with it. Show some brain mouth creatures roaming the woods and in the city. Turn this into a monster movie! I can see it playing out different in my mind right now. And the movie I am wishing it to be is a Corman style B movie that would have been fun to watch. Instead we get disjointed pseudo Last of Us knock off.

I think the giant mouth creature is around the 80 minute mark. And that short scene is the only bit worthy of your time. I suggest not watching this. Putting it on as background noise so you can see the giant mouth is the only plausible thing to do here. It gets a 1 star from me, only because I like that bit in this wholly forgettable movie.