Loved the concept & use of practical effects. Unfortunately that's where it ends. The editing, effects & cinematography are solid, but everything else was poorly executed.

Script, dialogue, acting, directing, all very poor indeed. It's just one stupid character decision, & horror cliche, after another with a massive mound of awful acting on top. The synthesizer soundtrack doesn't do it any favors either. I really wanted to like this movie due to its overall concept, & I was drawn into the beginning moments, but it went downhill so quickly & never recovered. If you like practical effects & body horror then give it a go, but you've been warned.

Writer / producer / director / editor D. M. Cunningham here created a decent practical effects showcase in search of a movie. The upshot is that a strange disease is rapidly infecting citizens in Michigan, and eventually it mutates its victims once it gets a foothold inside them. Cunningham relates the tales of various characters - some of them inter-related - as they fall victim to this horrible plague.

Unfortunately, very little of the thinly written "stories", and very few of the characters, were actually involving for this viewer. These people are ciphers and chumps, and keep making one bonehead move after another. That might have been the point, however, as Cunningham clearly couldn't wait to take these inane people and put them through the wringer. The gore & creature effects *are* a highlight, of course, but "The Spore" proves once again that gore & creature effects alone cannot make a movie. One has to give a damn about the tale being told and the people inhabiting it.

Granted, "The Spore" gets a bit more bearable in its second half, partly because this viewer didn't dislike the Serena (Haley Heslip) character as much as he did the others. (Vera was just the worst.). That said, he still wanted to yell at her for ultimately acting as dumb as everybody else in the film.

The music score is monotonous, the "acting" largely unappealing, and the whole thing is played *very*, *very* straight, with nothing in the way of intentional humor. "The Spore" is a drab, underwhelming affair that goes on for approximately 92 minutes, but unfortunately feels a lot longer.

Four out of 10.

Well I read the reviews on this movie before I watched it and to be fair the low reviews are correct.

But as always, I try to give a fair review of every movie based on budget, camerawork, acting , s-fx, music and more and I have to say, that for an amateur effort, Mr D. M. Cunningham seems to have done it all and he deserves a praise for it as he not only wrote, directed , produced this, he also did the sound editing and most of his family are in the cast list to save money so I can bet this cost less than £10,000 to produce.

He also seems to be a fan of John Carpenter, as the music for the most part was actually quite reminiscent of the burble and warp of the old John Carpetner'esque era of analogue synth soundtracks, coupled with some rather professional photography / quadcopter shots and a well designed cover art for the movie it all boded so well...

Unfortunately as other reviewers have pointed out, he should really have concentrated on the writing as it meanders from point to point aimlessly with no idea what it is, coupled with the bad acting, it fell a bit flat after the first promising 15 minutes.

Sad, as the gore effects and s-fx were; for an ultra low budgeter, rather well done and I did like the radio broadcast fill-ins reminiscent of Dawn Of The Dead with a soupcon of Pontypool and it had vibes going on of Cabin Fever.

With a bit more money and better writing and acting this nice little idea could have been so much more but as it is, I am afraid its a stretch at 3 hatchets on the horror scale out of 10 from me on this one!