Infection (2026)

This is another one I'm doing for CriticBridge, in this case it's a short film, which we haven't done on the site before. To this point any shorts I've covered have been on our Substack, and it may stay that way for shorts not a part of CriticBridge, but we'll see. As far as this one goes, one thing that interested me (beyond the compensation--which I want to stress again is only for the review, not for whether it's positive or not) is it was written by Los Angeles based students through the Kids in the Spotlight program, which empowers foster youth to tell their stories, who are then paired with professional filmmakers to create and mentor them on the process, and through that providing career training for employment in the film industry.

Infection stars Isabel Jane Brown as Jane, an office worker in what feels like a liminal space, working for a boss (Daniel Williams Lopez) who has some horrible infection. Beyond the fact that she wants career advancement, she also has a sick mother (Lisa Partridge) who needs her treatments covered, so there's a financial incentive for Jane to get ahead. As she works more though, she notices she's getting sick too. Is her boss's affliction contagious? And how does it connect to her possible promotion?

This was a great deal. I liked the liminal aspect of it, but how it was grounded in real world issues that the liminal space was able to explore in a more fantastic way. What are you willing to do to get ahead in the corporate world? Or forget getting ahead, how do you standout when there's been a merger or takeover and you want to keep your job? And then throw in medical debt on top of that, which is a driving factor for so many people in why they keep their jobs, especially in the US, where our health insurance is tied to our employment. All of this is embodied in Jane, and I think she does a great job bringing the script to life. There's a moment when the infection is growing on her arm, and her boss tells her her hands are next, and instead of thinking "what can I do to stop it?" she says "will this affect my typing speed?" And as ridiculous as that response is, over the course of the last six minutes or so that we've gotten to know Jane, we buy that she would say that. Director James Kicklighter and cinematographer Jonathan Pope also do a great job bringing this liminal world to life, it looks great visually, even if it's supposed to be a dull world with whites and grays and off-putting fluorescent lighting. Currently this isn't available to everyone, but in the last paragraph I'll include the link to Kicklighter's site, which has more information. It's worth checking out for sure.

I couldn't help but see the parallel in a film about job insecurity in the corporate world written by kids who are looking to get into the film industry, when that industry in particular has been going through extreme consolidation leading to fewer jobs for film professionals overall. More Perfect Union ran a story on layoffs due to David Ellison using daddy's (highly leveraged) money to acquire Warner Bros. Studios; and while we don't know the full details about James Gunn leaving as head of DC Studios, could it be connected to Ellison saying he wanted to use AI to streamline movie making and slash budgets? It also could be that Ellison brought on Jeremy Latcham to create a Christian Conservative version of the DC Universe. Either way, was Gunn presented a metaphorical pair of gloves the way Jane was at the end of this? We can see Ellison as this infected shell of a human, his body falling apart as he asks Gunn to make this Faustian decision, and then Latcham swoops in and says "I'll do it." The thing is, Gunn has a enough money to walk away, while Jane in this didn't, and a lot of people working in the film industry don't either. This is a long way of saying the fact that the kids in the Kids in the Spotlight program who wrote this crafted something metaphorically that stands up so well in the real world is amazing, and deserves our spotlight. Listed alphabetically, they were: Chelsea Franklin, Faleb Lindo, Fanny Gallegos, Matthew Miller, Tyler Ohaya.

Finally, to drive home how gross the rash Jane's boss had was--and the rash she was starting to develop--we get a cut to Jane mixing peanut butter into oatmeal for her sick mother. I never really considered it before, but even though they both taste great on their own, peanut butter and oatmeal, visually they're pretty disgusting. Peanut butter essentially looks like something you'd find in a baby's diaper, and the way oatmeal reacts with the water added to it there's this stringy connectiveness that looks like someone drooling or something when you take a spoonful of it. And while I'd never considered mixing the two before, it makes sense that that combination looks even more disgusting. For me it might have been the most revolting thing in the film, even worse than Jane's puss-filled rash--or at the very least, the two worked in tandem to toy with my gag reflex. Because I like both peanut butter and oatmeal separately, and from a taste standpoint they both should work together, it seems like it would be worth trying, but I'd have to look at it before I eat it, and I don't think I could get there.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now this is being screened for critics, and may be making the festival circuit, but you can go here to keep an eye on when it'll be more generally available: https://jameskicklighter.com/project/infection/. This is the kind of indie work worth supporting, and I hope it gets out to more people so they can experience it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt50302651