PATIENT ZERO: Doesn’t Have Charm Or A Point

Patient Zero tells a story of love and politics in a dystopia torn apart by a mysterious illness. Following a group of scientists hiding in a nuclear silo and looking for the disease’s first infected in order to create a vaccine or cure, it has many of the touches of a good movie but can’t quite seem to keep it together.

A confusing and underwhelming world

Matt Smith stars in the film as Morgan, a man who has been infected but, because his blood is resistant to the virus, has not come under the influence of the rabies based illness that has turned the other infected into bloodthirsty killers. The illness, a version of rabies, makes the infected incredibly violent as well as incapable of lying or listening to music. Unfortunately, this mostly just means we spend a lot of time watching infected people writhing to classic rock.

Because Morgan has been bit, however, he is able to speak the language of the infected (once turned, the infected can no longer speak English but instead communicate with a language closer to grunting). This makes him essential to the research of Dr. Gina Rose (Natalie Dormer), who uses Morgan to interview infected prisoners in her search for patient zero. A genuinely enthralling melodrama develops as Morgan begins an affair with Dr. Rose while still feeling a strong loyalty to his infected and captured wife.

Morgan’s concern for his wife folds nicely into the action of the film as the threat from the infected increase and his desire to be near her poses a potential threat. The film is even able to reach a period where the three of them (Morgan, his wife, and Dr. Rose) are forced to work together and make decisions as a team. While I won’t give away too much of the ending, I will say that I was extremely pleased to see that the film does not fall into the cliché of letting love serve as a panacea for the problems a character faces.

The science in the film doesn’t always make sense and if extrapolated could have some buck-wild implications about language and development. That said, while there is a lot of nitpicking that can be done with this film, I believe that would miss the point. Patient Zero does not present itself as meticulously researched hard sci-fi, and so I will not try to hold it to that standard.

The larger problem is not internal inconsistencies; it is a general fuzziness about the world that makes it hard to get swept up in the action. It is not always clear what the infected can and can’t do, what Morgan can and can’t do, and what the scientists can and can’t do. This creates a wet blanket of uncertainty that lays over the film and its characters.

The first half of the film mopes along in a malaise of underdevelopment. As the research peters along, the film is waiting for some spark. That spark is the ever-wonderful Stanley Tucci. Given his limited screen time and small number of locations, it seems that the film only had him for three days of shooting, but it certainly makes the most of those three days.

He plays an unnamed professor who was infected, but unlike the other infected in the film, is coherent, calm, and terrifyingly eloquent. With his introduction, the film picks up some real momentum as we find out just how fast the infected are evolving and finally get some clearly defined stakes for those in the silo. The professor came to speak with Morgan, which means that not only are the infected getting smarter, they know about this operation.

A Drought of Charm

Of Patient Zero’s problems, it’s biggest is a dearth of charm.

The subject matter of the film leaves open the opportunity for a campy or badass charm, but Patient Zero fails to deliver either. It would not be fair to say the infected are ever campy, scary, or tension raising. They come across as something closer to the vague idea of the infected in a pandemic film. Morgan’s wife is shown before and after her infection, and it looks more like she is going through a goth phase than rabid.

What’s more, the film misses every chance to be a sexy movie. I at first thought the lack of sex appeal in the film’s one love scene was an intentional artistic choice to show how dreary life was in the bunker, but eventually realized the film just couldn’t figure out how to make two sexy people have sex sexy. Given the amount of time this film devotes to muscular men writhing around in chains, there is another version of this film that is incredibly steamy. This is not that film. (It is fun, however, to imagine just how much time filming was spent making sure people were shaking right.)

Matt Smith makes a critical mistake by trying to play his character as badass rather than charming. Charming is already well in his wheelhouse, but if badass is, the film doesn’t show it. This is in part because of the film’s insistence on making it known again and again that he is sad about his infected wife. He comes across as a mopey mcgee, and it’s hard to make a mopey mcgee a badass.

Perhaps the largest reason Matt Smith is unable to come across as badass is that his job is primarily getting the infected to answer the sort of questions one would need to give before visiting their local doctor. I don’t know if there is an actor who could make questions that boil down to “Where were you born?” and “When did you first notice symptoms?” anything but pedantic. The film tries to make him cooler by showing that he is a record collector with a taste for classic rock, but unfortunately that isn’t that cool. Making matters worse, Matt Smith’s American accent is at best passable and at worse a staccato Muppet soundalike.

The almost politics of the film

There is a tendency for films that are in many ways similar to Patient Zero to be about something. Maybe the pandemic is an allegory or the way people treat each other in stress says something about society. I was on high alert for this in the film, but am only willing to go as far as to say that this film knows that politics exists.

The film’s name might suggest a comparison to the AIDs genocide, but it is only referenced for a scientist to joke that both patient zeros likely had sex with animals. I worried that the film (which spends a lot of time trying to keep a dehumanized other out of a fortress) might be about immigration, but the patient zero is from Minnesota and the way the characters discuss the infected do not match conservative talking points about immigration. I tried to think about what a group of violent people who cannot listen to music or lie would represent, but failed to find anything concrete.

Any leads I might have had were smashed to bits once the professor started to monologue. He insisted that the infected were a higher evolution of humans who were trying to wipe out a humankind they saw as an infection. Additionally, the professor sites a slew of legitimately angry [the professor states their anger as legitimate] political and social groups, ranging from feminists to freaks, as the cause of the outbreak. He claims that the virus is inside us all, but the anger inherent in modern society finally set it off. More than leaving unexplained why the disease is being spread by biting rather than political rancor, this has some worrying implications. Is the film implying that feminists are bloodthirsty and averse to life’s simpler joys (like music)? I don’t think so.

Patient Zero is full of half-developed statements about how societies act in crisis, what makes someone human, and gender politics. Unfortunately, the film never follows any thought long enough to make a point. Instead, one gets the impression the filmmakers knew that injecting politics could add some life to a script, but were unable to take it any further than that.

This phenomenon is rampant in the film. The general aesthetic is that of people who know what is cool but can’t explain why or how.

I could go through specifics of the film trying to talk politics, but that would in many ways give it more credit than it is due. The brief spurts of politics could be expanded to make points, but those points would only be undermined by all the other spurts in the film.

The politics of Patient Zero is spaghetti thrown on a wall. There are times when that spaghetti looks nice, times when it looks rough, and times when there’s no spaghetti. One might be able to find meaning in one section or another, but generally it is chaos. By throwing spaghetti at the wall rather than making a point, the film gives up another opportunity to deliver a better film than the ultimate finished product of Patient Zero.

Patient Zero: Conclusion

Patient Zero has many of the elements of a good movie, just put together in a janky and unfortunate manner. Surely someone could take the individual elements of this movie and after some time spent tweaking, shifting, and adding, make a really tense, enjoyable film. It is close enough to a good movie to keep you holding on and waiting for it to turn around, but does not reward those who stay.

If anything, this film underlines the possibilities of a pandemic film. At least for me, Patient Zero wets an appetite to see similar films, but certainly not to rewatch the film itself.

What are your favorite pandemic films? Please let me know in the comments below.

Patient Zero was released theatrically in the United States on September 14th. It is currently available on demand.