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Actress Jamie Lee Curtis is an icon known for her starring role in the "Halloween" franchise and other films and TV shows, including her Academy Award-winning performance in "Everything Everywhere All at Once." She's also appeared in beloved films like "A Fish Called Wanda," "True Lies," and "Freaky Friday." However, not all of her films have been winners, and 1999's "Virus" stands out as the worst.
Based on a graphic novel published by Dark Horse Comics, "Virus" stars Curtis alongside Donald Sutherland and William Baldwin (brother of Alec Baldwin, star of a forgotten "Final Fantasy" film) as the crew of a ship that's attacked by aliens who can turn humans into enslaved cyborgs. The film was a critical and commercial flop. It has a 14% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and only made around $30 million at the box office, less than half of its $75 million budget. "Virus" is so bad that Curtis herself said in an interview with Wenn (via Express) "That's a piece of s**t movie."
Curtis discussed one of her gripes, which was a scene where her character, Kelly Foster, inexplicably hides under the stairs from a monster that "can open walls of steel." She also said it was "maybe the only time I've known something was just bad and there was nothing I could do about it." Curtis did get one good thing out of making "Virus." The actress told IGN, "Then when your friends have [bad] movies you can say 'Ahhhh, I've got the best one.'"
Virus has its fans despite Curtis' feelings on the film
Universal Pictures
Critics agreed with Curtis' assessment of the movie. Roger Ebert gave "Virus" just one out of four stars, saying "The movie's special effects are not exactly slick, and the creature itself is a distinct letdown." Others, like The New York Times, had more positive things to say about the special effects, but they still found the film derivative of "Alien" and "Deep Rising," the latter of which had just come out the previous year.
Still, there are those with fond memories of "Virus," particularly those who were kids at the time and remember the toy line based on it. As Cody Hamman of JoBlo put it, "There's something about '90s toy packaging that was just so iconic." Retrospective reviews from the last few years have been more positive, like a 2020 one from Gone with the Twins that calls it "a fun little science-fiction horror film with creative creature effects and several noteworthy ideas." That said, if you really want to watch a sci-fi movie, there are plenty of sci-fi movies that should have been hits but bombed instead, which might be more enjoyable.