Insanitarium

Rating R Formats DVD Genre horror Directed by Jeff Buhler Publisher Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

If flesh eating mental patients aren’t your thing, then maybe you should pass on Jeff Buhler’s directorial debut, Insanitarium.  The film is meant to be a 90 minute thrill ride with blood, suspense, and a flesh eating army of crazy people.  However it devolves into a veritable orgy of overacting, illogical plot twists, and Jesse Metcalfe punching people. 

Metcalfe, of Desperate Housewives fame, plays a young man who gets himself committed to the same mental institution in which his sister is being held.  Ultimately, his goal is to rescue her from what he considers a nightmarish existence.  Upon arriving at the institution, Metcalfe’s character, called Jack by the doctors, finds out that everything is not as it seems.  

Many of the inmates seem to have an unhealthy obsession with blood and a bizarre crystallization in their eyes.  Jack finds out that the cause of this is the experimental treatments of the head doctor, Geanetti, played by Peter Stormare (Fargo).  Geanetti is insane himself and does not heed the warning signs about his wonder drug.  Soon the inmates begin to show a dangerous desire for blood.  One inmate even rips off the head of a cat in order to drink the blood out of its neck.  Jack eventually convinces his sister to try to escape with him.  They go through the usual gauntlet of challenges, in this case a sea flesh eating inmates, before finally escaping.  

Ultimately the main problem with this film was the separation between what was intended and what actually materialized.  The film was meant to be a terrifying thriller.  It was meant to scare people not with monsters, but with real people out for blood.  However, it fell short in this regard.  Geanetti comes off as ridiculously evil and insane.  He is the kind of villain that is so extreme he comes off as campy.  The inmates seem silly as well, boiling down mental illness into violent psychosis and bizarre physical movements.  

The story was also hampered by overacting in a film that does not require much acting latitude.  Metcalfe is alright as the constantly shirtless hero who glares often and punches just about everyone he sees.  The various actresses are simply there to be victimized and scream a lot.  Unfortunately, the only accomplished actor in the film, Stormare, tried to do too much with his role and ended up far less terrifying than his relatively silent character in Fargo.  

Beyond the blood and guts, Buhler tried to instill the flick with some social meaning, a la Dawn of the Dead.  However, unlike George Romero’s classic, Insanitarium’s final scene lacks depth and commentary.  Instead, it comes off as a confusing end to a disappointing blood fest.