Decent sci-fi horror/thriller. OK, it's not exceptional in any way but it's also not the steaming pile of poo that its rating here would suggest. I was expecting it to be a real stinker judging by some of the reviews I've read. On the contrary, it was a perfectly watchable movie of its type. Entertaining to a small degree but never dull. The cast isn't bad. Jamie Lee Curtis is the best of the lot. Donald Sutherland hams it up some with a silly Lucky Charms accent. I ask you though -- in what way is that not fun? Maybe people hate it because it has a "dumb action movie" quality about it. Sci-fi fans can be a prickly sort sometimes.

Virus is based on a Dark Horse comic book. It has a lot of behind the scenes talent such as Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator/Aliens.) Director John Bruno is an Oscar winner for visual effects for The Abyss and he also did the VFX for Terminator 2 and Titanic.

It is no surprise then that the film rips off many of these films in the genre especially as it becomes Aliens meets Robocop meets Terminator.

An electrical based alien life form views humans as a virus, only useful for spare parts and slowly converts the humans into cyborgs.

The film starts off in a Russian space station before settling in a Russian ship. Our heroine is Jamie Lee Curtis a navigator in a tugboat with uninsured cargo destroyed in a typhoon.

The salty captain of the ship, is mean, a drunkard and on the verge of catastrophic failure. He is played by Donald Sutherland.

They stumble on the now abandoned Russian ship and want to take it as valuable salvage before they realise something else is also aboard.

Lee Curtis shows a lot of spirit, she is assisted by a bland William Baldwin. Sutherland is the hissable villain, a mixture of Captain Hook and Quint from Jaws.

The special effects are very good but the script is a let down and the film is rather dull.

An energy based alien attacks the Mir space station then transfers to the science ship transmitting to the station. After a storm, an American tug boat captain by Everton (Donald Sutherland) runs into the Russian science ship. Captain Everton thinks he's going to salvage the giant ship and collect $30M in the process. Only there is something on the ship that they don't expect.

This is good premise for an action horror movie. And when you have the scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, this could have been great. It starts off good. The setup works. Then we find out these are a bunch of idiots. No matter how many crazy machines and cyborgs try to kill them, they can't buy the explanation from the Russian chick. I can accept Captain Everton and his money grubbing mentality. Every horror movie requires a human traitor bad guy. But the rest of them keep skating around the fact that there are machines trying to kill them.

The cyborgs are OK. The action is pretty good. The final action sequence is questionable. But all the good filmmaking can't make up for the characters being too clueless. What's the point of rooting for a bunch of idiots.