Despite a profoundly suspenseful start, The Spore never quite maintains its early momentum, suffering the chronic symptoms of a sometimes meandering plot and the occasional stilted performance.
However, fans of inspired practical effects and unfiltered bodily-based gore will want to watch The Spore in light of inadequacies.
So, let's kickstart the autopsy (Scalpel in hand). The Spore catalogs the harrowing rise of a lethal bacterial infection, charting its contagious spread through a narrow lense as it savagely infects the lives of a small isolated rural town and its inhabitants.
In spite of clear budget restraints and a lesser-known cast, particular praise should be paid to the painstakingly-crafted practical effects. Many of which will undoubtedly delight fans of shocking, disgustingly grotesque body horror imagery.
Expect plenty of puss-riddled protrusions, grimly exposed gizzards, and mutated steaks of rotting flesh basked in buckets of blood.
On more than one occasion, The Spore's gore-infested, eco-inspired special effects share the luridly sickening flavors of John Carpenter's The Thing. So in this aspect, at least, it is sufficiently stomach-churning in substance.
Unfortunately, the film falls short for me in aspects of story structure. Because The Spore documents the lives of 10 people, it rarely takes time to flesh out its character's backstories. As a result, it's sometimes challenging to invest emotionally due to these fleeting glimpses of life. However mysterious they might be.
Elsewhere, The Spore suffers from periodic pacing problems and some occasionally stilted acting in places - this took my attention away from its otherwise immersive atmosphere and inspired practical effects.
In summary, fans of body horror and apocalyptic ecological dread will definitely want to check this out, despite its errors. So working within that framework, The Spore earns our scary seal of approval!
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