Edit: I started this when I first became sick and couldn't write anything whilst I was infected...
I have finally recovered and can now finish this post.
1. Carriers (2009)This is a great film about two brothers making a road trip to there childhood holiday spot after a viral pandemic ravages the whole planet. It stars Chris Pine and was actually made in 2006 but wasn't released until 2009 after he gained success in the new Star Trek. They meet several infected and not infected people along the way. Can't really say more without spoiling the movie...but I do recommend it.
Symptoms: Flu-like symptoms (of course), bruising, gross open sores...and then death.
This is not a zombie movie. Noone dies and comes back to life. This movie is about a rage virus. Still scary as hell and I can barely watch it.
Apparently, director Danny Boyle claims it's not a horror movie...if this isn't a horror movie, I'm scared to imagine what a Danny Boyle horror movie would be like!
Symptoms: Even one drop of blood will instantly turn you into a rage filled monster attacking anything and everything...not a zombie.
3. Splinter (2008)This is an overlooked, not very well known horror movie about a couple stuck in a really remote gas station...there's something outside, that's been infected by this splinter virus, that wants to get in. This is another movie with a lot of WTF moments.
Symptoms: Within seconds spiny darts rip through your body and tear it apart...and then those pieces start moving on their own trying to infect anything it can detect with body heat.
This move is very disturbing. It's a Canadian film that was adapted by Tony Burgess from is own novel 'Pontypool Changes Everything'. A deadly virus, AMPS (Acquired Metastructural Pediculosis), is spread through langauge. It's set in a radio station in Pontypool, Canada. The most disturbing part is the the calls from the witnesses of the outbreak, what you imagine is happening is worse than if they actually showed it.
Symptoms: According to director Bruce McDonald-
"There are three stages to this virus. The first stage is you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it's words that are terms of endearment like sweetheart or honey.
The second stage is your language becomes scrambled and you can't express yourself properly.
The third stage you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person."
5. Masque Of The Red Death (1964)
Now for an oldie but goodie, by the master of the B-movie Roger Corman, based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story. This is a beautiful movie, filmed in 'Pathecolor', the famous seven colored rooms have been an inspiration to many filmmakers.
Vincent Price is Prince Prospero, who locks himself and several dozen other wealthy noblemen in his castle whilst the Red Death ravages the poor villagers around them. As they party, strange things happen and the 1% are not spared from the Red Death afterall.
Symptoms: The Red Death is a fictitious disease. Poe describes it as causing "sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores" leading to death within half an hour.
