Cast: Harry Aspinwall, Anita Abdinezhad, Christian Masters,
Ross Cowan, Claudia Troyer
Critics Rating: 3 out of 5
Director: Daniel Byers
Writer(s): Harry Aspinwall, Daniel Byers
Duration: 1 hour, 27 minutes
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Release details: Released on TUBI TV as a TUBI Original
Story
A man with a rare blood type is isolated during a pandemic for a study. But when he breaks a religiously followed punishing and lonely routine, he discovers a deadly world overrun by monstrous creatures.
Review
Having experienced a deadly pandemic ourselves, none of us are alien to isolation, fatal illnesses mass deaths. ‘Eradication’ takes it from there to a world of extremes, which now seems like a very real and chilling possibility. What with new variants of the coronavirus continuing to plague our lives along with a few other viruses making their presence felt.
Director and co-writer Daniel Byers successfully recreates this scary world that is isolated, dark and discomfortingly uncertain. It’s the world of David Baldwin (Harry Aspinwall) who has been living alone for two years, away from the rest of the civilisation, eating canned foods and speaking to his epidemiologist wife Sam (Anita Abdinezhad) through video calls. She is studying his blood to find a cure but as the movie progresses, the desperation and hopelessness keeps getting more severe. One can feel the frustration in David’s action as Harry brilliantly conveys it on screen. For a film made bang in the middle of the pandemic with a skeletal crew, ‘Eradication’ is surprisingly high on details and production values. There are sweeping drone shots of amply green landscapes of pine and spruce, juxtaposed with the creepy darkness that has engulfed the homes and hearts of its characters. It holds a mirror to what the governments can do in the name of finding a cure and how helpless we are in the face of an unknown virus that can kill you mentally and physically.
The narrative maintains a sense of creepy unpredictability but is way too slow in its execution. Something that tests your patience just like the pandemic did. Daniel keeps an element of mystery and drama in his storytelling technique. The thrilling bits are few and far between and just like most zombie films, this one goes too far in creating a make-believe world of monsters, who were once humans. But a part of it stays relatable because the story draws its inspiration from the real-world events that we all experienced in the recent times.
It’s not an easy film to watch considering just how dark and despondent its tale is but all the same this could have easily been true. And that is what makes it relevant and important because we have still not managed to eradicate the virus that killed so many of us.
ReviewRon 