When an alien contagion is released aboard a spaceship transforming its victims into demonic flesh-eaters, the crew must either destroy the infected or join them. 

There are many truths that I have learned from space travel movies, but the cardinal truth is never answer a distress signal. Written and directed by horror filmmaker Brad Sykes, Plaguers (2008) is a space adventure that is heavily doused in the horror of a zombie outbreak. It is a fun ride that takes influences from sci-fi and zombie movies of yesteryear and it is coming to DVD and Blu-ray for all of you B grade, campy film lovers.

In Plaguers, the Pandora is an earthbound deepspace cruiser carrying newly inducted captain Holloway (Alexis Zibolis), her begrudging crew, and the mysterious power-source that they have acquired and decided to smuggle back home. A day away from landing, they receive a distress signal and agree to check out the stranded ship. At first, the crew finds nothing, but as they are leaving they discover a group of beautiful women who say they are the last survivors of a ship overtaken by pirates. The crew of the Pandora welcome them aboard and continue on their journey home, but not before they experience bumps in the road in the forms of betrayals, sexy space pirates, and oh yeah, a deadly plague unleashed by the alien power source which causes terrible body decay and zombieism.

Plaguers‘ zombie outbreak premise is one that is done to death, and the acting may seem on the amateur side, but its practical effects are to die for! Some kills are epically disgusting, and I found myself cheering on the movie in these moments; it is in these scenes that Plaguers really shines. It is certainly a B movie, but there is a freedom that B movies have — a license to take risks since the movie will likely be bad anyway. Though at times, the acting and the film quality make the movie seem silly, the payoffs in kills are awesome.

What’s more, the film is littered with primo one-liners throughout its runtime, giving the movie a distinct action-film feel. There was not much of a sci-fi feel to the movie besides them being on a spaceship and having a robot in the crew, a la Prometheus, however, Plaguers definitely has terror, with body horror done cleverly, a low budget attempt at works like The Thing. The only time the makeup failed was when I literally laughed out loud at the final zombie “boss”, otherwise, I would say that this is a very low-budget version of Aliens crossed with Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead in a fun and campy way. You won’t be getting any great character development out of this one, but they can’t all be Ripely.

What may be adding to the film’s dated look is that it was released 10 years ago, however, its memorable body horror is timeless despite the rest of the movie not aging quite as well. For its 10 year anniversary, Plaguers is being distributed on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time thanks to Wild Eye Releasing (reviews: Scary Stories (2019), Door In The Woods) — and in HD, no less. Wanted to hate this one, but I cheered, I laughed, and I watched it twice.