So you went and got Coronavirus and are now in quarantine. Or you are barricading yourself with your arsenal of toilet paper ready for the coming apocalypse. Either way you are trapped in a single location and are starting to get bored. This is the perfect time to watch some movies, and given the circumstances some horror flicks based on pandemic outbreaks seems like the way to go. If you are looking for what to watch here is my Coronavirus Horror Watchlist.
Last Man on Earth: There have been three movies based on Richard Matheson's novel I am Legend, but this Vincent Price vehicle is still the best. A mysterious disease sweeps through the world and transforms every human being into a vampire except for Dr. Robert Morgan. The man who was once a bright scientist close to finding a cure, now finds himself barricaded in his house every night as the living dead try to get him. Naturally this takes a mental and emotional toll on him as time passes. His hopes seem to raise when he finds a woman who has not completely succumbed to the vampiric virus. Morgan utilizes her blood to create a vaccine, but it proves too little too late as the vampires finally catch up to him, and Morgan learns who the real monster is in this new world.
I Drink Your Blood: A Satan worshipping cult of hippies take up camp in a small town in this exploitation favorite. After a Manson-inspired cult assaults a young woman during a ceremony, her brother takes his revenge. He mixes the blood of a rabid dog into pies which he provides them which drives the hippies into madness and violence. Before long they begin to overrun the town and infect others who cross their path. A pack of survivors try to escape the bloodthirsty hoards but as their numbers increase their may be nowhere to run. I Drink Your Blood made cinema history upon it's release as one of the first movies to receive an X-rating.
Leave it to the master of body horror, David Cronenberg, to unleash medical-based terror on the Canadian countryside. After being in a horrific motorcycle accident, Rose is the subject of a radical medical experiment. While it does seem to patch up her wounds, it has given the young woman a thirst for blood and new stingers she can use to obtain it. Each man who falls prey to her is reduced to a vicious zombie state thanks to a new strain of rabies resulting from the attack. As the victims accumulate the city of Montreal is locked down in martial law. Searching throughout this desolate city filled with the infected is Rose's boyfriend who has to find and hopefully help her.
The Crazies: Evans City, Pennsylvania is simply an ordinary small town, until an airplane carrying a biochemical weapon crashes there and poisons the water supply. While the military tries to quarantine the community, they are too late and those exposed to the chemical are soon driven to be mindless killers. Stuck in this mess is are two firefighters and a nurse who are trying to survive in a town overrun by madness. Easily one of the greatest films from horror pioneer George A. Romero, the Crazies received a solid remake in 2010.
John Carpenter's remake of the science fiction/horror classic The Thing From Another World, transforms the monster into something more akin to a virus. Crashing to the Arctic from the stars and finding a home in an isolate research station, an extraterrestrial entity can change it's form at a whim. Kurt Russell plays MacReady a helicopter pilot who takes a party to the research facility which shows signs of madness. Before long they learn that the creature which caused this is still there and able to assimilate and imitate any living being it contacts. Paranoia and tension takes over as this rag-tag bunch have to discover who among them is not really them.
A landmark film of the J-horror boom of the 2000's, Infection is enough to make anyone distrustful of hospitals. A man with a horrific black rash tries to gain admittance into a small hospital for the night only to be turned away. But one doctor and a few other staff members are curious about the rash and the fact that his insides are turning into a green goo. As expected this soon spreads to the nursing staff and through the hospital. However, with Infection there is a twist to the disease which is ravaging the hospital. One doctor, along with the audience, believe that rather than a physical virus this disease has a terrifying mental component.
28 Days Later: Awakening from a coma, Jim discovers the city of London a nightmarish abandoned wasteland. It seems 28 days before his awakening a dangerous virus which turns people into murderous savages and wiped out civilization. He joins with a ragtag group of survivors as they roam the country hoping to find safe haven. They seemingly find it in the form of a mansion being protected by a military force, only to discover they may be more dangerous than the infected. Ironically 28 Days Later brought new life to the zombie genre, despite it is not technically being a zombie film. This Danny Boyle directed film was one of those rare horror films that proved so good even mainstream critics could not deny it.