AFFLICTED (2013)

Studio:       Sony Pictures
Director:    Clif Prowse, Derek Lee
Writer:       Clif Prowse, Derek Lee
Producer:  Chris Ferguson, Zach Lipovsky
Stars:     Derek Lee, Clif Prowse, Baya Rehaz, Benjamin Zeitoun, Zach Gray, Edo Van Breeman

Review Score:

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Summary:

A trip around the world becomes a horrifying ordeal for two friends when one of them is stricken with a mysterious affliction.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After Derek Lee is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, he and his longtime friend Clif Prowse embark on a yearlong trip around the world. Clif brings several cameras to record the trip for an online travelogue called “Ends of the Earth.”

Day 1 – Barcelona, Spain – Clif and Derek meet up with their friends Zach Gray and Edo Van Breeman, who are touring with their band Unalaska.

Day 7 – Paris, France – Derek hooks up with a Frenchwoman named Audrey and takes her back to the hotel room. Clif, Zach, and Edo decide to play a prank by bursting in on Derek. When they enter the room, they find Derek bleeding from wounds on his arm and face. Audrey is missing, yet her clothes are still in the room. Derek claims that Audrey hit him in the head and he does not remember what happened afterwards.

Day 8 – Vernazza, Italy – Derek and Clif say goodbye to Zach and Edo and continue their trip.

Day 10 – At lunch, Derek vomits violently, but refuses to go to the hospital.

Day 11 – While touring the Cheo Winery outdoors with a vintner named Bartolo, Derek breaks out in a painful skin rash. Back at the hotel, Derek angrily smashes the wall and the duo realizes that Derek has gained super strength.

Night 12 – After testing Derek’s newfound super speed ability, Derek’s eyes begin changing. After testing his jumping ability, Derek agrees to go to the hospital. There, Clif and Derek get into a fight with two motorists and Derek savagely beats them.

Night 14 – Blog Offline – When video footage shows Derek licking blood off his hand following the hospital fight, he and Clif accept that he is transforming into a vampire. They go in search of animal blood before an incident at a blood bank and the hijacking of an ambulance.

Night 17 – Derek kills Clif and feeds on his blood. Afterwards, Derek commits suicide by shooting himself in the face with a shotgun, but he comes back to life.

Night 21 – Derek decides to track down Audrey.

Day 22 – Interpol arrives to arrest Derek. Derek escapes through the city streets, although his skin is badly burned by the sunlight.

Night 22 – Derek finds a lead on Audrey through footage Clif shot in Paris.

Night 25 – Derek’s brother Jason arrives with the police. Derek flees again, but an officer dies in the pursuit after falling from a building.

Night 27 – Derek recovers Audrey’s cell phone from the hotel’s lost and found and texts every number in her contacts. After drawing out a man named Maurice, Derek follows him back to his place and takes Maurice hostage in an effort to lure Audrey. A Special Forces team stages a surprise assault on the building, but Derek kills all of them before escaping.

Night 28 – Audrey finally confronts Derek. After the two of them fight, Audrey details the nature of Derek’s vampiric affliction and leaves.

Night 37 – Derek takes his first human captive for feeding, although he chooses a child killer. Having also turned into a vampire, Clif is later shown attacking a man and two women.

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Review:

The reason why I slog through dozens of uninspired “found footage” movies about ghost hunters in haunted buildings and campers caught in the woods is because every now and again, albeit all too rarely, a movie like “Afflicted” emerges as a reminder of how effective the format can be when used creatively and with purpose.  For someone perpetually out of breath from defending “found footage” against the teeming legions of horror fans who dismiss the subgenre as in need of an Old Yeller mercy killing, discovering “Afflicted” is sweet vindication.  This must be how Howard Carter felt uncovering Tutankhamen’s tomb after years of hearing people declare that digging in the sand was a waste of time.

The characters.  The camerawork.  The story.  The presentation.  Everything about “Afflicted” is done right.

After learning that best bud Derek has an aneurysm in his brain that could burst without warning, Clif packs up his camera equipment and the duo embarks on a yearlong trip around the world.  The constant filming is for the online travelogue that keeps friends, family, and well-wishers back home in the loop on their adventures.

As a single man on a globetrotting tour is wont to do, Derek hooks up with a sultry Frenchwoman at a Parisian nightclub and takes her back to his hotel room.  As longtime guy friends unable to let a prank opportunity pass are wont to do, Clif and two other pals bust in on the one night stand for a good old-fashioned cock block.  What they find instead is Derek covered in blood with strange wounds on his face and his arms.

As the international trek continues, Derek’s condition grows increasingly worse.  When Clif and Derek finally discover what is actually happening, Derek can only wish that he had simply contracted an STD instead.  More than just well executed and highly entertaining as first-person horror, “Afflicted” turns into the most believable body horror transformation movie I have ever seen.

How do writers/directors/co-stars/friends Derek Lee and Clif Prowse pull it off?  Through sincerity of vision and respect for the medium.

Besides having an off-camera friendship that translates into onscreen chemistry, Prowse and Lee have a clear affinity for their project and a deep commitment to cherishing how carefully they craft it.  These are not two filmmaking hucksters having some friends improvise a script in the forest nearby and hoping to turn a quick buck on the cheap.  This is a project they care about, and that evident passion is what makes the audience care, too.

Riding along on the first act ramp-up is nowhere near the chore it is in similar movies.  Instead of routine exposition, interviews with locals, or pointless backstory, “Afflicted” bounces around France, Spain, and Italy as Clif and Derek skydive, tour a vineyard, and take the viewer on a great-looking visual trip through Europe.  Maybe these scenes feel so much better because the competition is so much worse, but the refreshing change of scenery and the effort taken to bring the film out of their backyard starts things on the right foot.

Barely 15 minutes into the film, the friendships are fully relatable.  When the expectation of ha-ha hilarity leads instead to a horrific hotel room surprise, it makes for a compelling moment that is only the first of many satisfying shocks that are delivered.

Given how impossible the reveal behind the premise is, “Afflicted” has no right to come off as plausible as it does.  Yet the realistic way that Derek and Clif deal with the situation is unexpectedly convincing.  Combine their thoughtful attention to staging with smart production design, and theirs is a world successfully bridging tangible reality with intangible fantasy in a way that should be unattainable.

It is almost worth being jealous over how much works in their favor seemingly without trying.  There is a simple shot of a dog trotting past the camera in one scene where the canine continually turns his head back at the lens as if measuring an unseen danger.  It’s the kind of moment that is impossible to script, yet luckily leaps in their lap as just one more dollop of icing on a cake that could give Willy Wonka diabetes.

From a mind’s eye-burning image of a shotgun suicide to a chest-mounted camera chase scene that outdoes anything Jason Bourne has ever tried, “Afflicted” blends superhero action, bloodthirsty horror, and straightforward drama into genuinely memorable entertainment.  This is why “found footage” exists.  “Afflicted” is one of the best examples of ingenuity in storytelling that transcends the much-maligned format rather than exploits it.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits sequence.

Review Score:  90

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