Macabre…ish Horror Review: The Hive
The Hive, 2014/ 1 hr 33 min
Adam (Gabriel Basso) wakes up in a barricaded cabin, confused, with no memory and infected with something. He’s covered in black bile that fluoresces under UV light and his body is sprouting some kind of boils. “Remember” is written on the wall with pictures below it. There’s also a taped sign that says, “Don’t Let Anyone In. No Matter What.”
He checks his wallet and the contents trigger his memories. He remembers, he wrote all the notes around the cabin. After opening a closet door, he finds a woman’s corpse, her head, wrapped in plastic wrap. After unwrapping her head, he remembers her and it triggers memories. Adam gets around.
Meanwhile, a bunch of memories pop up that seem to belong to someone else, an older man in the 1980s, a brain surgeon called Dr. Baker (Sean Gunn) and a Russian scientist Dr. Yuri Yegorov (Elya Baskin) doing experiments on subjects in an attempt to connect their brains in a kind of hive consciousness. Adam notes it on the wall in chalk. And little by little, his memories return.
He and a friend, Clark (Jacob Zachar), got jobs at a summer camp, Camp Yellow Jacket, he remembers he and his friend having a water balloon fight with the kids, being chastised by their boss and he caused a girl, Katie (Katherine Prescott), to have to get stitches. Adam likes her but she knows he gets around. Katie is not the girl who’s remains were in the closet though, that’s Jess (Gabrielle Walsh).
The cabin Adam is holed up in, tells him he’s still at camp, specifically the infirmary, and something terrible happened there.
While Katie and Adam were out for the evening, they watched a plane crash and contacted the ranger station. Adam, Clark, Jess and Katie can’t resist and drive to the crash site, there’s a fiery debris field but they can see the tail has a seal on it. They find an arm with a brief case cuffed to it, inside the case the contents are covered in black goo except something that looks like a card. Then a zombified pilot (Todd Christian Hunter), still wearing a parachute, approaches. They jump in the truck to leave after the zombie grabs Clark and they wreck their truck.
Flashback..
The Russian Scientist, Yuri, finds success with his experiment. The virus that he infects his subjects with are communicating telepathically but there are awful side effects like severe vomiting, their arteries turn black and their bodies sprout black boils.
And Dr. Baker wanders home after a surgery but he doesn’t seem happy about it. He writes an equation in a notebook, an equation recited by a dying eight year old patient, Kayla (Talitha Bateman). An equation she shouldn’t have known.
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Back in the cabin, Adam writes that equation on the wall. And continues to have flashbacks.
He remembers waking up in the crashed vehicle and Clark is freaked out, Jess flew out the window, she’s seriously injured and when the zombie pilot finds her, he vomits black bile into her face.
Ignoring Clark’s warnings Adam and Katie bring her back to the vehicle, it doesn’t start so they all walk back to camp. Jess is violently vomiting and Adam notices black slashed on the walls in the infirmary. Nurse Tessa (Sonya Eddy) isn’t there. It spooks him and he blocks the door with a bench. Then Jess seems to die. But then she wakes up, announcing, “We Can See You All!” and her voice is different, it sounds like more than one voice coming out of her.
Then she vomits in Clarks face and Katie knocks her out.
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Back in the 80s with Dr. Yuri, Subject 14 (Elaine Kagan) warns him that the hive cannot be contained and that other subjects are being released and they are coming for him. In 30 seconds they will enter the room and they do.
Clark, Adam and Katie talk about a plan of escape, Clark says they should abandon the 150 kids that are at the camp and just leave. But Adam and Katie are against that. Then Jess speaks for the hive and warns them. Adam and Katie head to the radio to contact police and Clark stays with the seemingly raving Jess, who’s tied to a chair. The hive taunts him and tells Clark that Jess had sex with Adam. And Clark is not ok.
On the radio, Adam and Katie are not getting the sense of urgency they were expecting. But they go to get the kids and they are all infected, them and their cabins covered in black vomit. They’re too late.
Soon Clark changes completely, he chases Katie down just to vomit in her face. She tells Adam to run.
Outside, Clark wants in the cabin and inside his head, Adam can hear him/them loud and clear. Adam lets Clark in and he looks very different, Adam wants to know where Katie is. Clark/The Hive taunts him. Tells him to embrace his anger but he won’t. He does however have a message he wants Clark to deliver to the hive. Adam strikes Clark in the head, over and over, with a baseball bat. He watches the black infection retreat as Clark dies.
Adam discovers he can tap into anyone’s mind. And discovers he is disconnected but still one of the hive. Which only happened because of a glitch caused by a memory with a strong emotional attachment.
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In another life, Dr. Yuri tries to tell Dr. Baker that the virus is actual evil but Dr. Baker shrugs him off as a quack, then Dr. Yuri pulls out a gun.
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Adam remembers where Katie is, in another room of the cabin, he hopes to use what he’s learned, to save her. And the hive, slips up and Adam sees his way in. If he can kill her, the virus will die, just like it did with Clark. Then, if he can resuscitate her, she can come back. Then they can all come back.
After, they are both resuscitated Adam and Katie try to escape to the van but they have to get through a potential gauntlet of kids and the pilot.
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Dr. Yuri came for the virus to stop what he knew was coming but he inadvertently became the cause of what he tried to stop. The arm that was attached to the brief case was his arm. And a vial leaked in Dr. Baker’s lab. Before Yuri left the building, it was already too late.
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Adam knows there is nothing out there, nothing’s left but Katie doesn’t know and so he spare’s her and leaves her, her hope.
This horror/sci fi movie was directed by David Yarovesky and it was excellent! The story is really good and intricate, with very little filler. This is not a zombie movie per se but it’s also not, not a zombie movie. I think it is a welcome change and spin on the zombie genre and an exciting twist of a viral outbreak genre. I would love this to get a physical release.