This latest production by an industry famous for its mind-numbing extravaganzas is - at best - a decidedly B-flick-quality wanabee sci-fi tale. Second-rate by virtue of a plot featuring extreme nonsensicality and a vapid, humorless screenplay, but fear-inducing and death-producing nonetheless, it cannot therefore be classed as merely a never-to-be-cult-status C-flick. The reader will see that my review of the movie is decidedly more imaginative and artistic than the film itself:
“The Jab” is featured from the very opening scenes as something everybody needs or be at risk of nobody seems quite sure what. All The Authorities constantly tell the citizenry that its benefits outweigh the risks, but none will make actual solid claims of what the benefits are apart from “maybe you won't get as sick”. Compared to what?, the movie-goer will surely ask. And surely no one has a clue as to what risks are entailed since The Jab has not been rigorously tested. “Rigorously”? From what is presented, it seems that even the word “tested” is an overstatement. But things get weird quickly when The Jab is revealed to have incredible powers to induce its receivees to dispel all doubt, throw caution to the wind and ignore all counter-argument to become true believers in what is then claimed to be a civilization-rescuing medicine that is obviously mostly placebo**.
This might be the only suspenseful plot point of the whole film: Jabbed friends and foe alike start to react with furious indignation merely when it is suggested to them to consider alternative ideas. Families, and entire societies are ripped apart into warring camps, at first merely wars of insult and outrageous accusation, but soon evolving into roaming vigilante scenes with all the usual mayhem and destruction. And all of this mostly by suggestion, given the majority of Jabs might well be blank doses? Talk about weak plots!
A “been there done that” psycho-pharmaceutical remake of The Body Snatchers was my first impression (an inane title for the film will surely follow: The Psyche Psaboteurs? A working title had not yet been decided at the time of writing this review). But no necessity this time for any physical trickery like secretly stashing pods in the unconverted’s closets to take them over after sleep comes on. Quite astonishingly, this time it’s all done with smoke and mirrors: nightly prime-time TV news depicting The Clinic with several happy customers receiving The Jab; the evil Doctor Fausti appearing in a scientific Moses costume at his lair at the lightning-storm-shrouded castle in the High Swiss Alps, the headquarters of PharmaGiantsInc., (or maybe the scene is somewhere in Wyoming, hard to tell) and quoting from stone tablets revealing to us for the first time the long-lost 11th Commandment (Thou SHALT take The Jab!); talking head experts and wussys galore telling us THE TRUTH on every talk-show. Smoke and mirrors indeed.
So far the film is a confusing mish-mash of total nonsense, about the only thing that the movie-goer can hold on to is that The Jab does indeed take over The Mind and nullifies one’s powers of logical reasoning (admittedly not one of the greatest of the human species’ abilities, and the claim being perhaps the closest approach to reality the film achieves). And peeking out the window through almost closed venetian blinds Humphrey Bogart style we see the ready-to-be-Jabbed happily lining up at the Mind Nullification Centers. (There follows several meaningless car-chases and trivial special effects scenes, filler material attempting to disguise the inability of the screenwriters to come up with something that would logically follow from the Bogey scene. Best go out for some popcorn during this action-packed interval.)
Not to be judged the biggest of the film’s ridiculosities - for there are a Duke’s Mixture of them and it is easy to see that expending any brain-time trying to decide among them is a pointless exercise - no one seems to be sure of the exact nature of what The Jab is supposed to protect one from. The story keeps changing. Early on we have the evil Doctor announcing the sudden appearance of an unprecedented threat to all of humanity, and then there are some hotspot outbreaks of what appears to be a serious disease that nevertheless is not all that much different from the worst cases of previously known and widely described medical conditions. But of course we are assured that high up in the PharmaGiantsInc. tower, laboratory teams of experts are working on The Solution to The Novel Threat.
But the disease hotspots seem to die out or are swiftly counteracted by common methods, and here and there replaced by large-scale outbreaks of normal seasonal sniffles. The “Golden Standard” test that shows whether The Jab is working, or not working as the case may be, or even exactly what variety of the sniffles one has caught, is revealed to be as uncertain as the mysterious threat itself. The Test upon which the credibility of Doctor F. rests - not to mention the film itself - is more than a little bit undermined by the revelation that The Test is a test that tests little or nothing at all, convincing the movie-goer to conclude that there is really very little entertaining material here at all. From this point in the film, those staying in their seats are probably sleeping or paralyzed. But the Fat Lady ain’t sung yet...
Former experts, now sidelined and censored, point out in underground, still uncensored communications platforms that The Doctor not only holds patents on The Jab, but on a long series of patents that suspiciously seem to be precursors of whatever it is that causes the easily snuffed-out hotspots. As things progress, it also becomes totally unclear whether The Jab might somehow produce the exact same type of condition that was detected in the hotspots. So could the casualty rate that at times seems relatively low be explained by the preponderance of blank doses? And in alternate scenes where the casualty rate is depicted as sky-high, The Jab be blamed? The film-goer is left with so many questions not worth analyzing it is a wonder that anyone would actually stay until the end.
We are repeatedly left in an “Is it real or is it Memorex” situation and the screenwriters just don’t seem to care. Just how the director, writers and producers expected to get away with such a vague and confusing plot is beyond me. Who could finance such a mess? Actually, there might be an answer to that...
Unfortunately the movie copy that I received for review ends at the third car chase, I guess so as not to allow me to provide any spoilers. So how does the movie end? Let me take a wild stab. In any sci-fi flick worth its salt a good surprise ending is a necessity. Sometimes we are saved, in other films of usually greater impact the bad guy - or bad thing - wins. So despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that I could replicate the IQ of the obviously untalented screenwriters to guess what they had in mind, (If indeed “mind” is an appropriate attribution), I will complete the screen-play using a couple of facts that point the way.
First, it is obvious that the only underlying unifying theme is that of filthy lucre, and who will get it at the expense of whom else. And I ask, haven’t there been at least 43,097,642 movies with that very theme? How boring. The film has cutaways to censored persons talking about the patents, and some asides about getting rich, some flashbacks of the young Dr. F. and how his dad told him that whosoever should findeth a cure for the common cold would become the richest man of all... But how does it all tie together?
I have a little confession to make here: it seems one of the production crew, realizing how lame a production he was being asked to contribute to, and how devastating a review I was sure to write, took matters into his own hands. Just this morning I received by private courier a small parcel, and therein found a USB device with the rushes of the very last scene. Indeed, it is all tied together here, but only through some clumsy dialogue. Doctor F. and his Henchmen are sitting around an immense green baize table in the conference hall of PharmaGiantsInc., high in the Alps (Wyoming maybe). It is Christmas time and the gradual replacement of the Golden Standard Test with tests that actually test, has led to an almost total disappearance of what The Jab was supposed to treat/prevent/whatever. Anyone getting tested “positive” now is told to relax, “it’s just the sniffles, go home and take an aspirin with lots of fluids.”
The conversation:
F: Boy did we put one over on them this time! I haven’t enjoyed anything as much since I saw The Sting! Tell me, don't you think I look a little like Paul Newman?
(A short uncomfortable silence occurs)
Henchman1: Yeah, and little did anyone realize that PharmaGiantsInc. was in great difficulty - so many patents expired and no new ones on the horizon. We still had oodles of cash but the future was looking dim. And we didn't even need to get patents on the concoctions! That little beast we invented did the trick.
H2: All thanks to the genius Dr. F! (an off-key rendition of Auld Lang Syne heard in the background)
F: As a thank-you to you all, I have enriched all your Cayman Accounts with ten big ones!
H3: How can I ever thank you! My kid wanted one of those 40-foot working replicas of the latest America's Cup hydrofoil sailing machines, but they are a bit pricey... How happy he will be now as a result of your generous largesse!
F: Well, I can afford it. But it's not over yet! Hardly! It was most fortunate we could totally prevent governments in The West from recommending or even allowing the use of those two common and safe drugs for early treatment. You know the ones I mean. That could have sunk the entire project before it even got underway. We knew from old research that a carefully formulated combo of a few such items, always available to all, could rapidly cure all such beasts, the one we invented as well as all the seasonal grips, flus, colds and sniffles. They are all basically the same type of beast.
H4: Yeah, my wife’s a natural medicine addict, she was always telling me that zinc could make a cold a lot easier. I didn’t believe her, but now!
F: So, the future looks brighter and brighter! We now control a patent on a specially formulated mixture of those drugs... how many cases of sniffles do you think occur every year? Yeah, it’s a Very Big Number! We might be able to charge at least 89.95 for this remedy at Walmart, and considering that it costs us about 0.16 a dose to manufacture, another 0.03 for distribution and a generous 0.99 promotional kickback to our trusted medical friends (and for the most trusted a few weeks vacation every year in Tahiti)... Friends, a toast!
F: Oh, and I almost forgot. Not all of you were totally aware of what the side-effects of The Jab implied. And here’s why we made sure that Westerners were our primary targets for The Jab. True, a few had immediate side-effects, but our most secret research shows that there will be unusual and never before seen long term chronic conditions for The Jabees, ones for which we are already rapidly developing novel treatments! Only rich or heavily-insured Westerners will be able to afford them, of course, but even the prospect of prolonging their lives for another year or two... That’s why we ignored The Third World and let them go their own way. And that’s why we made sure that you and many of our supporters received those Fake Jabs on TV. The World is OURS!
The END
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*With all due credit to Lewis Carroll whose nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” inspired the title for my own nonsense story. Lewis Carroll’s nonsense is strictly for fun, but Jab-berwacky depicts nonsense of another kind, the kind the rich and powerful get up to in their spare time that routinely involves death, war, genocide, lies, viz., abominations of every dimension. Wacky, yes, but lethal as well.
**It is a bit of a puzzle in the film how PharmaGiantsInc. suddenly achieved a capacity to produce billions of something that previously was produced only at a far lower rate. The story line doesn’t seem to indicate there are any shortages of other PharmaGiantsInc. money-makers as a result of their ramping up production of the tricky-to-make concoctions. The movie-goer has to be content with speculations: Buy a few more bottling machines and hook them up to city water? City water would surely have enough industrial and pharmaceutical residues of all sorts to make it seem to most testing regimes that there were many “active ingredients” in The Jab.