Insanitarium (2008)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

Jeff Buhler

Writer (WGA):

Jeff Buhler (written by)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

This is going to hurt.

Plot:

After he's institutionalized in order to cover for his sister, a young man encounters a doctor who is turning his patients into flesh-eating psychopaths.

Cast

Jesse Metcalfe	...	Jack
Kiele Sanchez	...	Lily
Peter Stormare	...	Dr. Gianetti
Kevin Sussman	...	Dave
Evan Parke	...	Charles
Olivia Munn	...	Nancy
Carla Gallo	...	Vera Downing
Armin Shimerman	...	Hawthorne
Lisa Arturo	...	Heather
Kurt Caceres	...	Loomis
Molly Bryant	...	Nurse Henderson
Dale Waddington Horowitz	...	Jack's Mother
Mark Kelly	...	Policeman
Sharon Schaffer	...	Policewoman
Jeff Buhler	...	Paramedic #1

MPAA:

Rated R for bloody violence and gore, sexuality/nudity, and language throughout.

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

USA:R | Australia:R (2008) | Australia:R | Netherlands:16 | Argentina:16

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

BenderSpink

Quotes:

Dr. Gianetti: He's not sick; just a little less engaged.

Insane. Bonkers. Crazy.

A young man pretends to be crazy in order to get himself committed to an asylum where he hopes to locate his mentally ill sister. Once there, however, he discovers that the man in charge of the institution is an even bigger lunatic than the patients in his care: he is using the inmates as guinea pigs in dangerous experiments that ultimately turn the poor crazy blighters into cannibalistic killers.

Half an hour into Insanitarium, and I was like...meh!: it had a nice concept; I liked the big-breasted, scar-faced nympho-maniac (always a bonus!); but the film seemed kinda so-so in the actual storytelling department. THEN the nutty scientist tied up his assistant, and slashed her leg with a scalpel before shagging her, and, pretty soon after, a cat got it's head ripped off. 'Maybe this is going to be good after all', I thought to myself! And, thankfully, it was.

The film gets progressively more bonkers by the minute, and by the time the end credits were rolling, I was grinning like a madman myself, having witnessed one of the barmiest and bloodiest contemporary horrors I've seen in a long time.

Whilst the plot might not be perfect, leaving one or two questions unanswered (particularly about the rather ineffective security system in the asylum), Insanitarium succeeds by being plain bonkers and totally unpredictable. I watched this film knowing absolutely nothing about it beforehand, and was totally gob-smacked by the quantity of blood and violence. Who could've guessed there would be so much mad-scientist mayhem, loony-bin lunacy, and gratuitous gore? How the hell did this one slip past my radar? With arm-ripping, gut munching, meat cleaver mutilation, stabbing, electrocution, and some juicy scalpel action (including a brilliant 'up under the chin and into the mouth' moment), this is one film that no gore-hound should miss out on.

If I'd been asked to rate this movie based purely on the first 30 minutes, it would've got a 5. However, as events begin to spiral out of control, and the action becomes more and more chaotic, the film just gets better and better, and fully deserves a final rating of 7.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 8 for IMDb).