Character Name: Jack Mann

Epidemiologist Dr. Linus’s (William Sadler) search for a missing colleague takes him to a missile silo in Wyoming. Upon entering the silo he discovers his dead colleague and unknowingly unleashes an entity that feeds on human host bodies.

Jack Mann (Brett Cullen) is a photo-journalist and has been tracking this entity since it killed his wife and unborn child ten years ago. This quest has cost him his friends and any semblance of a normal life. He follows the entity’s trail to a Boston hospital where it has taken up residence in the body of Nurse Annalise Summers (Chelsea Fields).

Searching for answers, Jack encounters Dr. Linus, who has not been able to convince himself of the existence of the entity. Also stalking the hospital’s corridors is Aaron Rainier (Norman Lloyd) who calls himself ‘the hunter.’ He has been tracking this thing for fifty years and tries to enlist Jack’s help. He wants to retrieve the nurse’s body so it can be entombed in concrete and sunk in the bay, virtually guaranteeing the demise of the entity.

He explains to an incredulous Jack that the entity gains it’s power from those bodies that resist the strongest, until it literally burns up the host before moving on. It is searching, says Aaron, for a willing host with the ambition to use the power it can supply.

Before they can get to the nurse, she escapes from the ICU unit and enters a restricted area of the hospital where Dr. Cornelius (Steven Williams) heads the research team working on a vaccine to a virulent flesh-eating virus created by the US Government.

The entity plans to take a vial of the virus and unleash it on the city of Boston. The army’s answer to this problem is to shoot the nurse/entity as she tries to escape with the vial, forcing the entity to find another host. It chooses the hospital’s weasel of a PR Director who promptly leaves the premises with the virus, running smack into a Saint Patrick’s Day parade.

Jack and Dr. Linus aren’t far behind but ‘the hunter’ beats them to the punch, managing to stab the PR Director, forcing him to drop the vial, before collapsing himself. Only a well executed diving catch by Jack saves the city from certain doom.

Unfortunately, the entity escapes. The torch has been passed to Jack who, with Dr. Linus and Annalise, commit themselves to finding this entity and destroying it before it can do more harm.

(Review courtesy of Sandra Nitchman)

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