Well I'll say this for "Afflicted", it definitely was one movie that turned out totally different than I expected. I had googled "top scary movies on Amazon Prime" and in alphabetical order this was the first ones to show up. Obviously my expectations weren't that high, figuring it to be just another zombie film 🎞 from the movie poster. Anyway the "found footage" story starts off with two best friends (Clif and Derek) at a "going away" party and about to embark on a year-long trip to tour around the world 🌍. Along the way they stop off in Paris where drunken Derek hooks with a French girl named Audrey. Later Clif tries to "c*ck block" Derek by surprising them and going into their room. However he is shocked to find Derek alone, bloodied and near unconsciousness. It turns out Audrey was a vampire (Not a Zombie!) and has worked poor Derek over. Things progressively get better and worse for Derek. For better, he gains super human strength and can lift cars 🚗 and break huge rocks. He also can jump far distances and can run almost as fast as a cheetah. For worse, sunlight begins to blind him and fry his skin. Worst of all he begins to have a lust for human blood and starts turning into a vampiric monster/creature without the blood to sedate him. After failing to obtain blood from various sources, including a blood bank robbery, Clif finally cuts his wrist to draw blood to try and satisfy Derek's need. Unfortunately by this point it's too late and Derek savagely attacks, kills and drains Clif of his blood. Next we see Derek looking into the camera 🎥 about to commit suicide with a double barrel shotgun (he conveniently got it somewhere in France??). He apologizes for killing Derek then blows his brains out! Then he pitches forward with a huge bloody hole 🕳 in the back of his head. All of a sudden his head rises up with him screaming and a demonic 👹look on his face! Obviously you can't kill a vampire with a shotgun. Derek vows to hunt down Audrey who made him the undead monster he is. After traveling back to Paris, Derek is able to "somehow" able to recover a cellphone 📱 Audrey had left there. While there "somehow" his father manages to sneak up on him in the lobby (never mind Derek's vampiric heightened senses of hearing and smell) with the police 🚔. (They found out about the failed blood bank robbery.)
Derek manages to escape but not before one French Barney Fife manages to fall off a building. At a secluded hideout Derek uses Audrey's cell phone to send out text messages to all of her contacts telling them to meet her. He hopes at least one of them will show up and lead him to her. Finally a bald guy does come by. This contact shouts Audrey's name and then after getting frustrated with no answer walks back home. Derek follows him to his apartment where the bald guy tries to ambush him. The bald guy ends up getting the Hell beat out of himself instead. After tying up the bald guy and putting him on camera 📸, Derek begins to interrogate him about Audrey. No sooner has he begun then the French police bust in! They shoot Derek down and we see him fall to the floor. While the police 👮 are talking, we suddenly see Derek getting up through his chest cam and he begins SLAUGHTERING police in almost a berserker rage (lots of good bloody action). After leaving the carnage, Derek is shown washing the gore from himself back at his hideout. While doing this he suddenly gets a phone call on Audrey's phone. The next scene shows Derek waiting there when he is struck out of nowhere. Audrey has returned and she warns him to never bother her or the bald man again. Enraged, Derek engages her in a short fight before she gets the upper hand. Finally he tells her to just kill him. And then she apparently does, shoving a large piece of wood into his chest. But then as he lies there, it seems it wasn't intended as a death blow. Derek struggles and manages to pull the crude wooden shaft out. Audrey then explains there is no cure to vampirism and he must feed every 4-5 days or he will become an inhuman monster. Derek says he doesn't want to kill people but she says he can always "chose" who he kills. Lastly he asks her why she turned him. She responds, "You we're dying." which was true because it was revealed at the start of the movie that Derek might have a serious problem with a brain disease. In the last scene, a man strung up in chains is focused on by the camera in a dark basement with a pillow case over his head. Derek removes it and shows the man a crying girl on a cell phone image. He asks the man if that is his phone, inferring that man had done terrible things to the girl. Derek tells the man, "I'll give you the same chance you gave her.". You hear an anguished scream from the man blended with a beastial snarl from Derek's vampire form. The End. Not bad for a "found footage" film (really it's a "sent footage" film since Derek sends it with his explanation of what he's become to his parents).
