When a virus overcomes the male population of the United States and turns them into murderous psychopaths, a mother and daughter escape across a country where their safety is in question.
Dante's The Screwfly Solution feels a bit like a full-length movie that has been cut down to a shorter film, only to show what is really necessary. Not that the movie feels too short and kinda cuts off halfway through, on the contrary, this way it manages to be exciting and have things constantly happening in it all the way. What I'm saying is that while some of the episodes barely makes it all the way through, this one was most likely written as something that were meant to last a bit longer than only an hour. Anyway, it's pretty good though and personally I thought it was better than Dante's contribution to season 1 that was Homecoming. While Homecoming had certain things to offer, it was also a bit goofy and had some humour in it, but The Screwfly Solution has nothing of that - this one felt way more frightening, had very realistic looking violence in it and was actually something of a nail-biter.
Was I surprised to see Jason Priestley showing up in the film? Oh yes indeed I was, but take my word for it, the guy really delivered, which was a great thing to see. I mean, it would be terrible if you have a story as good as this and it would come out looking not that great due to some actor being part of the production - and while that has happened before, it's not the case here so don't let the star of 90210's name put you off. The film centers on a family that are affected by the plague of violence that's sweeping through the country, turning the male population into psychotic killers. When on the job to investigate what has caused this plague, sickness or virus that makes men kill women, one of the family members (who's a female) is murdered. Barney (Elliott Gould) and his son-in-law Alan (Jason Priestley) starts to look for a cure and a way to stop this strange plague that seems to turn all men into cold-blooded killers.
 
As the movie keeps rollin, more and more women starts dying by the hand of men everywhere. For a while, the films deals a bit with religion, but thankfully lets go of that to move on to other more interesting things. What we get to see a lot of here are women getting killed and it is just horrible. While I'm all up for gore and sick stuff, the graphic violence that was in this episode just looked so darn realistic, not to mention brutal and at times you almost forgot that you were just watching a movie. Another thing I really liked about The Screwfly Solution was that for the first half of the movie or so, Jason Priestley was in the lead, but then, as he "got infected" too, we instead got to follow his wife and his daughter trying to stay alive, with his wife taking over the leading part.
The Screwfly Solution, just like Homecoming, was a thinkable film, and while we could dive deeper into the subject if humans are the pest of the earth, I think I'll just leave that to others to discuss for now. Also, another thing that was quite cool was that you could almost divide the episode into three different categories of horror. The first being with the plague that turned all men into beasts which instantly made one think of a heap of zombie flicks out there with a virus turning normal people into something horrible. The 2nd horror category would be survival horror, simply because Priestley's wife (played brilliantly by Kerry Norton) was trying to stay alive and was left out there alone in a world filled with crazed men that would instantly kill her if they saw of what sex she was. 3rd and last category would be Sci-Fi, which felt a little bit weird at first, but the more you thought about it after the film was over, the more sense it made. Well, it made sense the whole time, but I guess that part had to grow on you a little first. But since I don't want to spoil anything for those about to watch this episode, I'm just not gonna say anything more about it.
The Screwfly Solution was a pretty good episode, not to mention different. While I can't say that it was great, it was at least well worth watching and had a pretty interesting story that, for most of the time, felt more like a violent thriller rather than a pure horror movie.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: The Screwfly Solution
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Joe Dante
WRITING CREDITS: Sam Hamm, James Tiptree Jr.
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Jason Priestley, Elliott Gould, Kerry Norton
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 6/10
Masters of Horror (S02E07): The Screwfly Solution Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E07): The Screwfly Solution Trailer Click here
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