Virulent is a futuristic thriller set in a post-apocalyptic world. In the animated prologue, a pandemic which threatens to annihilate the entire human race, overwhelms the ordered world and chaos ensues. Hospitals are overrun, the Government comes undone, leaving the world vulnerable to opportunistic criminals and militant groups. Power is eventually restored and a series of ‘containment facilities’ are erected. The afflicted individuals are collected and held against their will, cut off from the beleaguered world, stripped of their human rights, their bodies, once dead, heaped into unmarked ditches and forgotten. It is in this climate that Subject 291088 manages to make an escape through the barbed wire fence and into the surrounding woods, commencing the live action component of the film. Subject 291088 is a young man, sick with infection and exhaustion, lost and disoriented - and unaware that he is being carefully watched. What follows is a brutal chase between hunter and hunted, set against the backdrop of a dense pine forest. Subject 291088 must overcome the rigors of infection and make the flight of his life as he is relentlessly pursued by his assailant, all but unseen behind the protective gas mask he wears. The tension mounts as time runs out for 291088, culminating in a chilling confrontation in which there is room for only one survivor. Virulent is a fast-paced and entertaining survivalist tale about political oppression and the fragility of social order in times of crisis.