Main cast: Douglas Chapman (Lt John Paxton), Kyra Zagorsky (Carla Frye), Dallas Blake (Willis), Karina Carreck (Tanya), David Cote (Clive), Bruce Crawford (Lopez), Katherine Gauthier (Theresa), Paul Lazenby (Shannon), Christopher Jordan Lee (Oscar), Curtis Lam (Chen), Giles Panton (Troy), Patrick Sabongui (Nolan), Kevin Stark (Henry), and Philip Granger (Colonel Donald Magnusson)
Director: Tom Raycove
Lt John Paxton is an angry man. He and his men were hired by the government to be part of a secret experiment, only to be left for dead when things went wrong. He obviously survives, and now he wants to go back to the island and find evidence to incriminate the government. Naturally, when he can’t find a plane to take him there, he decides to wave a gun and hijack a plane. Some guys try to tackle him, his gun goes off, and oops, there goes the pilot, shot right in the head. The plane crashes down to the island to question, where chemically-stimulated zombies now roam, looking for fresh meat to chew. “I just want to protect you!” he yells at the passengers who understandably do not want anything to do with him other than to beat him dead. Refusing to divulge the threats in the island is, of course, for the sake of these passengers as they are picked off one by one.
Toxin is one movie after my heart, because it finds some pretty good excuse for Douglas Chapman to walk around shirtless. I know, in an island with zombies that can infect people with a bite, that is not the smartest thing to do, but this movie is not coming close to being halfway smart, so that guy can bare his pretty torso all he wants. Heaven knows, he’s not good for much else, as he speaks like he’s having trouble reading out lines from the teleprompter and his muscles are a prettier sight compared to his efforts to resemble a human being on film. Let’s just say that Mr Chapman is a better stuntman than he is an actor.
The rest of the cast isn’t any better in the acting department. They are more wooden than the trees around them, and all of them bear facial expressions that suggest to me that they can’t wait to get their paychecks and drink to forget that they are ever in this movie. Because, honestly, the plot is pretty dumb and the acting isn’t coming close to salvaging matters. The dialogues are horribly clunky and all efforts to be funny fall flat. There are three people, including director Tom Raycove, credited for the script. Maybe one of them wrote things while the other two kept going out to buy drinks or whatever it is to keep them going, or maybe they all took turns.
Still, after a while, things do become so bad that they are hilarious to laugh and poke fun at. That loser, Troy, especially, tries so hard to be an action hero and a lover boy, only to repeatedly fail like only a first class punchline could. On the bright side, Kyra Zagorsky channels the crazy violent don’t-fuck-with-me action babe just perfectly, and really, she and Douglas Chapman do make a lovely violent couple that are far more vicious than any of the red-faced poorly made-up things called “zombies” in this movie ever is.
I won’t recommend that anyone go out of their way to watch Toxin, but if it does happen to show up one day on cable, give it a shot. You may end up laughing uproariously and be more entertained than you’d think. Just be careful and tune off once you start to feel woozy in the head. When the marketing material proclaims that there are “millions dead” in this movie, it may be referring to one’s brain cells.
