Pandemic (II) (2009) User Reviews

Really bad movie

[solo7-581-990629 · 2/10 · 13 November 2009]

Wow, that was bad. I hoped to see a good thriller, but this movie is just boring and very stupid.

The story does not really make any sense, and the filming is just awful. There are some "twists" in the story that are not explained, are unnecessary or just very naive. Also, the way the two "doctors" behave when they suspect that the disease might be contagious is just hilarious.

In addition to the story, you'll also see some really bad and annoying lighting and camera work, and there's not really much to say about the score either.

Don't waste your time on this.

Boring and not interesting

[elcee1987 · 2/10 · 28 October 2009]

See here's the thing. I don't mind a really truly terrible movie, because at least it's so bad it's funny. This one though, just elicited NO reaction in me. It wasn't awful, it wasn't disgusting, it wasn't funny, it just...was. I couldn't even muster up the emotion to rate it 1/10 for awful.

After watching this I still don't understand what was going on. The military good/bad aspects might have been a nice twist, but it was handled all wrong and didn't have any sort of a plot setup to make it feasible. The spooky scary music did nothing for me and the acting was pretty, well, boring. Plus, the suffering, dying animals at the beginning of the movie did not bode well for me, a card-carrying member of the Humane Society. I should have turned it off when I saw that.

When I saw the cover and the title I thought it might have a bit more energy and maybe horror or zombie parts than it ended up actually having. This movie just didn't have...anything..

Another version of a story thats been done to death

[dbborroughs · 4/10 · 18 October 2009]

Jason Connery directed story about a weird disease attacking people and animals in a small town. of course the military are involved. Its an unremarkable little film that is ultimately an okay time killer. Frankly the problem here is that the whole affair is not only far from original its also the sort of thing that has been done before numerous times infinitely better. As I said its an okay time killer, but its little more than that. I have no real idea why this film got a green light when there are so many fresher films out there waiting to be made or discovered. It's not bad but for me after a short while the film began to be background noise because I could go about my business and not have to worry about the plot since I could pretty much fill in the blanks. If thats what you're looking for this will fill the bill nicely. If you want something more original pick something else to watch.

Not bad enough to be good

[jjbink · 1/10 · 28 October 2009]

This is one of those films that you forget about as soon as you turn off the TV. There are so many holes in the plot that even with major repairs it wouldn't hold water. The acting is mediocre, at best. The main character completely misses the mark on being the beloved heroine. In fact, I'm sure that I'm not the only one that was happy to see her go in the end. If only as an indication that movie would soon be over.

It really was just a terrible mash-up of every army conspiracy theory movie out there, right down to it being in the water.

I can honestly say that this was one of the most boring movies I've seen in a long time. I'm usually able to find the merit in any movie, but this one left me grasping at straws. I found myself wishing I'd have let my partner pick out the movie this time. May I please have back my 90 minutes? ...and for the record, a pandemic is an outbreak of infectious disease that spreads through human populations across a large region, NOT a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Had a good feel about it, but rather awful otherwise

[siderite · 5/10 · 12 October 2009]

I rate it "stay away" for the simple reason that the production values were negative. The sound was awful, the plot ridiculous, the endless scenes where someone would run or drive or ride while a music was playing in the background were annoying, the acting was truly shameful. And the title was pretty much deceitful, as the plot doesn't treat a pandemic, but a contagion, and a very localised one at that.

There is something good about the movie, and that is the paranoid feel that you get when the army comes marching in, cutting every link to the outside world based on some unknown Act, but basically through the power of their guns, and you don't really know: are there to protect you and are assholes by design, or are there to hurt you and they are feigning civility?

Bottom line: if this would have been a low budget movie about alien abductions and anal probes, probably it would have been more believable. I don't think there is any reason why someone would watch this film except for learning to spot the mistakes in film-making. It is not so bad as to be funny, though.

A complete waste of time

[KineticSeoul · 1/10 · 15 October 2009]

This has got to be one of the worst movie I have ever seen, stay away from this and don't even bother watching. Everything about this film was stupid and absurd, and they try to take this in a serious direction but fails miserably. It also has these drive scenes which is pointless and doesn't add anything to the movie, and it takes forever for it to end with it's lame music playing in the background. The ending was sort of satisfying, but that just cause the acting is so bad in this you just don't care for any of the characters especially the female protagonist. She tries to act like a tough chick that don't take crap from anyone, but she just comes across as being annoying, lame and just plain stupid. Some crazy critics who likes to nit pick everything in a movie might enjoy this film since there is tons of flaws or just will end up getting a head ache.

1/10

So dumb!

[jeharris-39655 · 1/10 · 16 February 2020]

This is not the movie you're looking for. You're looking for a different movie--a much better movie--with same title. Don't watch this one.

Yes, there is a mysterious illness in this movie, but I don't think it qualifies as a pandemic. The illness never leaves the confines of America's least populous county. I counted less than ten deaths in this movie, and that includes a couple of horses. Hardly a pandemic--not even an epidemic.

Is this a zombie movie? No. No zombies. No walking undead. No hunger for brains.

Is this a "conspiracy theory" movie? Perhaps. You decide.

The only positive thing about this movie is that there is no romance to get in the way of the story.

Awful!

[orpd705 · 1/10 · 4 November 2009]

I only chose 1 out of 10 because there wasn't a .5 out of 10.

I'll keep it simple. I want the 1 1/2 hours of my life back that I wasted watching this movie.

The story line wasn't that bad, but the acting, directing and score (if you want to call it that) were pathetic.

The beginning of the movie showed promise as was stated in an earlier review, but the script and the actors ruined it quickly.

The music did not fit the movie. The cinematography was atrocious by continuing to show the same still frames seemingly just to fill space. Some parts of the movie were so dark you couldn't tell what was happening.

Whoever mixed the sound for the movie should never be allowed to do that again. Some parts of the movie were loud; others were barely audible.

The Worst

[sdquinn2-1 · 1/10 · 17 November 2009]

This is the movie that puts the cheese into cheezy. The premise of the movie is that the military has quarantined a county in New Mexico because of some deadly outbreak. That is a good premise to begin with, but there are a few problems. The first one are the uniforms worn by the military. The uniforms are completely unrealistic. There is no "U.S. ARMY" name tape on the uniforms. The soldiers have rank on their uniforms, but no rank on their caps. There is no unit insignia anywhere in sight. Soldiers are wearing black boots with ACU uniforms. I could go on and on about the mistakes on the uniforms. The second problem would be in the quarantine of an entire county. Do you have any idea how many small roads leave a given New Mexico county? You would have to post half the U.S. Army in New Mexico to keep residents from leaving a county. Finally there are large parts of the movie where nothing goes on, so they just show the female star driving around and play music. Avoid this movie at all costs.

A good B movie Thriller

[vicvega1284 · 5/10 · 20 October 2009]

I saw Pandemic at the store and instantly though to myself Zombies!! I was wrong this film focuses on the relationship between the small town mainly a small group of characters in this small town and the Government during a Quarantine. This is not a horror film it is more of a Sci-Fi B movie thriller and a pretty good one. The acting is good all the performers were good except maybe two of the Army Soldiers in the background who would only have a line or two. There were not many special effects but the effects they did have were done really well. I really liked the ending of this movie it gave the film so much more depth and had me thinking about the film after it was over. I can only give it a 5 though if you are a fan of the genre or really interested check it out otherwise not much will be missed, for most of this has already been done before and better.

Good entertaining popcorn movie

[CailinPro · 8/10 · 15 October 2009]

This is an entertaining thriller. It's definitely not an Acadamey contender but it's got a good ride for the audience. Even though it's not a deep, meaningful movie; the movie goer is left pondering different elements of the story line. The acting's fine. This is a good popcorn movie to watch. Pandemic is Jason Connery's first film to direct and there are some minor mistakes, but nothing that makes this film a screwup. He's has potential of being a really good director. I don't think anyone who was involved in making this film would be embarrassed by it. It's a low budget film that delivers. Any movie, that can take the audience's mind off from their daily lives, is a success. That's what movies are all about.

An interesting movie of how people are deceived into thinking that the government and military would not do anything to harm them.

[rufwiley · 7/10 · 13 November 2009]

It's interesting that this movie is coming out in a time that there is evidence that the vaccine companies and governments of many countries may do something similar at any time. In Ukraine, they're spreading a deadly mutated virus not through the water but by spraying the air from airplanes. Like in the movie, governments are covering it up and not letting mainstream media talk mention it. One has to look at the alternative media on the internet and search pneumonic plague Ukraine to find this deadly pandemic that is infecting 200,000 people a day and is killing people similar to how they die in the movie - their lungs and nose fill up with blood and the lungs basically disintegrate (according to the doctors: total destruction of the lungs) and become black. So far, over a million people have become sick and although the "government" and "WHO" give the "official" number of people dead at 239 (since 10/31), doctors, who gave information to sources other than the official media, are saying that 100s are dying everyday if not more.

A vet is confronted with the US army in her hometown, unknowing that she is trapped in a conspiracy theory of the US government.

[jandeleeuw100 · 1/10 · 24 May 2011]

Throughout the intro of the movie I immediately noticed that the producer just loved extended and stretched shots, I guess to fill up the movie. We see a man riding a horse for about 2 or 3 minutes, ending up dead by a lethal virus.

Immediately after the incident, we see the young vet driving in her car for about 2 or 3 minutes.

Then, we see the US army entering the small village for about 2 or 3 minutes.

Not much later, we see the young vet driving through town, greeting everybody, again for about 2 or 3 minutes.

What I'm trying to say that this horrible movie is so slow-paced, that you start to get bored instantaneously. I felt skipping those boring, long scenes or just play with my phone, because in large parts of the movie, nothing is really happening.

There is no action throughout the movie and the movie could not grab me and let go of me, because the plot was so weak, there were no interesting dialogs as the acting was horrible and I was expecting to see "something" happen! But literally nothing happened.

The vet was quite annoying with her big mouth and seemed to be the only resident of the village who actually stood up against the contamination of her village (imagine?? only the vet, not even the mayor).

I was seduced by the cover of the movie and the title, hoping for an outbreak of a virus! But nowhere in the movie you can see a man in radioactive suit, or do we get to see dead people rising!

I hope my review keeps people from viewing this lame movie, as it will ruin 1.5 hours of your time!

A terrible, awful film that has absolutely no redeeming qualities.

[yeager501 · 1/10 · 21 April 2013]

First things first, it relies on false advertising to sell. Sure, the back-of-the-box blurb is sorta accurate, but what sells is the name and cover art: there are NO cool gas masks. There are NO big cities affected by a plague. There are no stormy, overcast days mirroring the abysmal dysphoria of a human world threatened by disease. This movie is a Grade-A example of movies being posers in an already bloated genre of films.

This film feels like garbage someone put in a candy wrapper and stashed in the vending machine. I rented it from Redbox, watched it once all the way through, and took it back in less than three hours with a look on my face like I was smelling bad cheese. It was horrible! At first, I honestly thought that someone had gotten the "actual" Pandemic DVD, copied the little iOS5 stickers on the center, and replaced the disc with their own shitty independent film.

The music is awful, the visual and audio effects are cheap, and at least 50% of the entire runtime is just montage padding of NOTHING. Watching a lady drive her truck, or her and her dorky man-ape friend run about backwood fields for a few minutes to crappy minimalist pop music. The plot is cliché, the writing is actually worse than an Uwe Boll script that diminishes all empathy, suspense, or drama, and you can tell immediately that the entire budget went into renting those tacky Humvees.

Overall, I'd only recommend this POS DVD if you have a collection of horrible movies for that sake, because this should be your #1-3 Gilded Disc as a tribute to "Cinema Done Wrong." 1/10 and only because they had the balls to release this film...

Sucks

[Stoney-stonebraker · 1/10 · 24 February 2013]

This movies sucks...my biggest problem is you made the United States Army look like a joke. No service branch tabs uniforms looked like crap and in what damn army does the service members drive a shiny hummer. Next time you want to make a movie with service members get it right. I truly hope you do get it right. I don't know why on gods earth film lets you get away with this horrible acting and making our service members look like a joke. So complete thumbs down on this huge waste of good money.and you need to put a rating on here of please let me commit suicide next time I view a movie made by this director and contains these horrible actors. Or just quit making movies go back to making ridiculous clay animation in your basement.

Absolutely useless

[jetcultir · 1/10 · 8 June 2014]

1 out of 10, because I can't give it a lower rating.

The cinematography is brutally awful. The script ... OK I can't even call it a script. The acting does its level best, but the script doesn't make any sense.

The close captioning / subtitles are the worst ever.

The soundtrack is up and down, loud and soft, and the music has nothing to do with the movie except this is somewhere in the region of the country where the music is supposed to fit - only it doesn't.

The military is ridiculously portrayed, absolutely horrific, an embarrassment to the actual men and women who serve.

Just ... do not waste your time. I would like that hour and a half of my life back.

Filming Location

[amerithai1226 · 3 October 2013]

This really isn't Phoenix, Arizona but Buckeye. Arizona 30 miles from Phoenix. Just curious why this movie was made. Want more information on why that filming location and why Phoenix is listed as the filming location. I ate at the restaurant not to long ago and it has changed hands but the outside is still the same. After she leaves the coroners office after seeing the coroners body the sign reflecting in her mirror says Buckeye. How it compares to some of what is going on around the world sends chills down my spine.

Although it is slow starting and some of the dramatic effects are a little cheesy I still liked this movie after trying to watch it before and turning it off.

Low budget film

[xring-53519 · 2/10 · 16 December 2020]

I thought this would be better but, I was wrong. Waste of time.

Low budget, awful and a waste of time

[jkinlaw1988 · 3/10 · 10 January 2010]

I just finished watching this movie and really wished I would have rented a different one. If you even look at the cover of the movie at your local rental store then you just wasted your time. I strongly discourage anyone renting and especially buying this low budget film. If you look at the pictures on the front and back cover, you'll notice it does not match ANY scene in the movie. It's definitely a misguided catch as to how the movie is going to turn out. This movie was shot in 12 days and from listing to the dialog it was written in 10. Crew members were asked to play characters in the movie because of the $200,000 low budget.

The "$200,000 budget, 12-day shoot" produces what you'd expect . . .

[charlytully · 2/10 · 20 April 2011]

. . . which is total balderdash, as the Brit in the cast roped into his first American job might say. Graham McTavish (Captain Riley) says during his DVD extra interview he was worried he'd be fired as soon as he opened his mouth and the crew heard his crappy American accent, but he needn't have worried. This PANDEMIC defect was microscopic for a project plagued by pandemic defects. Since it would take more than a gigabyte to list them all, I will just focus on two.

Characters state in the movie that the fictitious setting of "Diablo County, New Mexico" (actually Arizona) is the least populated county in the U.S. Well, I have made many visits to the least populated county in my home state--a state which is one of the 10 most populous--and that county has a population of about 1,800--with NO stoplights and NO McDonalds or other fast food restaurants. It also is my understanding that there are about 100 counties out West and up East LESS inhabited (by human beings, at least) than the county I have in mind. The fictional Diablo County shown in PANDEMIC, however, has a McDonalds, a large original downtown area and an even larger, newer commercial district. The infrastructure, featuring numerous stoplights and heavy traffic in frequent scenes, obviously contains a population well north of 5,000. Plus this particular county is said to have OTHER towns! Not to mention all the ranchers living outside city limits. So to list one of the many crew members pressed into service as "actors" (some with fake names, apparently unable to afford SAG cards) as an "angry villager" is a ludicrous misnomer.

Secondly, the plot threads unravel throughout the movie at a rate even faster than that at which the Army's killer virus is mutating. One can only guess who is supposed to have released the virus in the screenwriter's mind--the general dad, who may or may not be involved in a military junta now running the USA, or his totally implausible prodigal son, who spends his first five years AWOL from the "Special (Ed?) Forces" fighting for every anti-Western guerrilla movement in the world, and then the next five years hanging out with America's only ventriloquist veterinarian (I don't even have time to discuss this laughable post-production ADR loop-group screw-up) an his horse farm. It is really terrible a person has to pay just as much to watch PANDEMIC today as they would need to shell out to see AVATAR (and there was at least a modicum of talent involved with this project; I rated the cast & crew DVD "Interviews" extra for PANDEMIC at 7 of 10).

Not bad..but not good either

[fatbutterflysdontfly · 5/10 · 7 September 2013]

When the movie first started, I almost turned it off. At first I couldn't figure out how the opening scene related to the movie. I kept it on though and it finally made sense. I enjoyed the conspiracy theories of the one character and some scenes were pretty good, overall though, it was too slow. I'm not really sure what about it exactly made it uninteresting. The character development was not too good. The whole story didn't feel very connected. For me, it didn't get interesting until the very end. The last twenty or thirty minutes it finally picked up. The end was the only thing that saved the movie really. So overall, I give it a 5. Half good, half bad. Because about half of the movie was decent and the other half was a waste of time. I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it, it's just not my cup of tea.

Pandemic left me paranoid. I like movies that keep me guessing

[Cheermomshari · 8/10 · 20 October 2009]

Pandemic left me paranoid. I like movies that keep me guessing! There were some problems with the story. I would have liked another scene of Dr. Green and Clay drinking something and then dying. It seemed like those scenes were necessary to the plot but were left out. I didn't like the main female actress's acting. Aren't there better actresses in Hollywood? Was that the best they could find? I know it's low budget but the other actors could act. Clarke has tied for the worst actress, the female love interest in Alvin and the Chipmunks was terrible too. That lady is the worst actress in Hollywood. However, the quality of the acting from the rest of the cast was solid. I've been a big fan of Ray Wise since Twin Peaks and I love it that he always plays villains. The chase scene was too long but I was entertained by the film over all. I am so disappointed that Jason Connery didn't do a cameo in the movie. He's such a cutie! Overall the movie is suspenseful and owns up for being a low budget film. With all the hype about the pandemic we are facing in our nation, I would say this is a must watch film, it kept me entertained. I like movies that the plot isn't something you pick up on in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Love any zombie movie

[paulaatrujillo · 6/10 · 16 February 2021]

I actually enjoyed watching the driving scenes since it was filmed in New Mexico and our beautiful mountains were in the backgrounds. Most of all I love zombie apocalypse and Sci-fi movies even though a lot of them are cheesy.

so irritating bad, it took me three tries to see the whole movie

[willemisdebeste · 1/10 · 18 February 2010]

I normally do not take the time to register and to write reviews on things, but this movie is so bad i want to warn other people for it.

It's really a waste of time. The story is so bad that i wonder if they wrote it only to annoy me. It took me three times to watch the movie till the end. First time i fell asleep and the second time it irritated me too much.

The things which irritated me most were: 1)- the storyline ( have seen pornographic movies with a better plot) and especially the beginning in which the doctors know the disease is caused by a virus and that it is contagious just from looking to one dead body and they contact the medical authorities because of a serious contagious outbreak after just 1 dead person and 2 dead horses. Than the army is directly send in(arrives after 30 minutes) and the main actor (one of the doctors)doesn't think that's is a bit strange till after she is being told by an other character like after an hour into the movie. 2)- the title of the movie (there is no pandemic) 3)- the repeating useless scenes in which the actors just drive in a car, or the one in which an army broadcast is repeated twice for no reason 4) the poorly chosen music in some scenes.

Just never watch this One of the worst movies i have ever seen

Terrible movie stay away

[hopesfall42 · 1/10 · 8 January 2010]

As the previous guy that reviewed this said this movie is a complete waste of time. I am 100% agreeing with him there is too many flaws in this movie the one that stuck out most for me was the military uniform.... if you are gonna put one in the movie at least make it look legit ... they didn't even have the US army patch and no unit patches so it looks like a bunch of old idiots put on ACU's and their mission was to screw everything up. The Actors are horrible and they lack character. Id have to say the best part of this whole movie is when people die and that blood starts going in their face veins. I thought it was cool but still the movie is a total waste of time 0/10