Virus Detected (2025)

"Rough Around the Edges but Refreshingly Funny in Parts"

There's been quite a surge in ultra low-budget horror film-making in the UK in the last couple of years. The best and most appealing of these make up for their lack of money, resources and (sometimes) talent with buckets of enthusiasm and energy meaning that, while it would be easy to point out their shortcomings, a much better time will be had if the viewer goes with the flow and enters into the spirit of these frequently ambitious endeavours.

One of the newest of these home-grown horrors is VIRUS DETECTED, an anthology picture with a theme of technology either in revolt, gone mad, or behaving just plain bizarrely. The brief 75 minute running time is host to six short stories plus a framework set during a radio station's all night broadcast. It should therefore come as no surprise that none of the stories wastes any time in getting to the point.

We start with Virtual Insanity, with its entertaining Russian Doll-like structure of VR games being played within VR games and the three people involved. It's light and breezy and plays as a good comedy sketch with a decent payoff. Things gets more serious with The Little Ones, in which a girl's mobile phone starts playing a video of its own accord that shows what actually happened to her recently lost lover.

The Toy gives us a talking AI vibrator and a couple eager to get to grips with it as the device itself struggles to understand what it is and its place in the world. It's daft, its inventive and at times it's really quite funny. Diehard fans of BritHorror may well be reminded of the work of the late, great Norman J Warren in the scene in which the vibrator flies across the room in much the same way a sword did at the climax of 1978's TERROR, plus the film's general cheery attitude to the limitations of its own resources gives it a similar feel to Norman's 1986 GUNPOWDER.

LoveToast has a toaster fall in love with its owner and then encourage him to exact a terrible revenge on the toaster's previous owner. Was this intended as a crispy crunchy bread-based homage to James Glickenhaus' 1980 THE EXTERMINATOR? That certainly seems to be the vibe, anyway. Next is Bad Penny and back to straight horror, where a woman's Alexa-style device starts talking of its own accord after lights out. Like the rest of the film the execution here is rough and ready but the idea is sound and the payoff satisfying.

Finally, and after the conclusion of the framework, we get Mic Drop. This is an idea that could have been stretched into a 45 minute episode of an anthology SF TV show but instead it's neat, concise, and the storytelling is just ahead of the viewer all the way, providing a highly satisfying punchline for the entire movie to go out on.

 VIRUS DETECTED is currently playing the UK Festival Circuit