Movie Review : the Sickhouse (2007)

Another movie that came out swinging only to trip over its own shoestrings. At least they were bloody shoestrings. The Sickhouse was brought to use by writer/director Curtis Radclyffe and screenwriter Romla Walker. It borrows, almost expertly, from a plethora of horror genres but fails to execute at critical points in the story where the movie could have gone from just OK to great.

The Sickhouse is about an American Archeologist, Anna (played by Gina Philips), who is in London investigating a former plague hospital before it get's shut down by the authorities in just a few hours. While Gina sneaks into the place to take one final dig (consequently releasing a character called the Plague Doctor), four balls-to-the-wall British teens come roaring in fresh off a car theft. Alex Hassell plays Nick and Kellie Shirley plays the gothy and very pregnant Joolz. The teens have to ditch their ride and take shelter in the old plague hospital after hitting "something" in the road. They eventually join forces with Anna and spend a good deal of the movie looking for a way out of the hospital and avoiding a couple of night watchmen while the Plague Doctor works on them one by one.

A small percent of the movie is shot like the Blair Witch Project with a touch of Marylin Manson's The Beautiful People video thrown in (also reminiscent of the latest House on Haunted Hill), and all through the lens of a video camera using night vision. The Plague Doctor himself is strange, abnormally tall, and wears a dark straight jacket-like outfit with a huge beak-ish protrusion. Apparently, this fellow killed some children at the hospital sometime in the 17^th century and has now returned for more, thanks to Anna.

In the thick of things, Anna begins doling out assignments to the kids to go for this and that in a series of obvious setups for the Plague Doctor to have some fun. I started to get the feeling Anna might be secretly working for the Plague Doctor. There is even a scene where Anna takes up someone's cell phone and then gives it back to them, telling them to use it to call for help if they can find a signal somewhere. Duh.

Ok, so maybe I'm splitting hairs a bit here.

The meat of this story is a rollercoaster ride both jagged and disorienting. What could have been some interesting confusion becomes very tedious by the end of the film. One of the teens simultaneously becomes possessed and infected with the plague, and strange markings show up on the walls written in blood. Joolz, the pregnant girl, begins losing her mind inside the hospital. When she becomes lost and alone, it allows for some extremely gruesome and disturbing scenes which are reason enough to watch the movie.

It turns out that the good doctor is after Joolz's baby.

As things unfold, the teens begin fighting amongst themselves and, consequently, die lamely and non-violently through a series of awkward and confusing scenes. Even Joolz seems to go quietly after giving birth to a bathtub of maggot-worms.

The ending was like trying to figure out why cicadas birth every 17 years. Why not? Anna gathers clues from some un-interesting looking story book full of kids' drawings that highlight just how the 17^th century kids were murdered by our good doctor. There are also clues scribbled on the walls presumably by the long dead children.

Our remaining two heroes (Anna and Nick) confront the evil one, beating him in a foot race to the place where he's hidden Joolz's baby. Anna finds the baby being looked after by some mongoloid servants of the Doctor, and she steals it away just in the nick of time. I'm a little confused about how this happened. I think she wins a stare-off with the Plague Doctor. Hell, by this time I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

As they try to escape, Anna is forced to kill the suddenly possessed Nick, and then she runs away with the baby (errr...as I like to call by this time, "the piece of wood wrapped in a sac cloth"). I have to interject something here. I've seen at least two horror movies recently where someone is running with a baby, and it looks more like they are running with a football. If anyone, especially a woman, were running with a baby in their arms, even if it was for dear life, they would at the very least carry the child with both arms and hold the baby wrapped tightly to them. Hell, why not just drop the baby? Damn thing is slowing you down anyway. In The Sickhouse Gina Philips has hold of this thing like a bag of rice, its head flopping all over the place. The Plague Doctor is the least of baby's worries!

The end was a mess of confusion and running. In a strange culmination of flashes and blue light, a child's voice can then be heard describing how Joolz's baby (now found by the police I guess after Anna dropped it) will somehow allow the plague doctor's spirit to live on. The child says, "And they sacrificed themselves for him and his past for the plague doctor to live on forever. And you being a malignant host an infant herald of doom."

Yep, I didn't get that one either.

All in all not a bad idea. The acting was better than your standard slash n' cut movie even if some of the scenes were awkward. Strangely enough, what started out as a potentially frightening film petered out. This was a movie with a decent setting and some bloody suspense but had none of the violent, juicy payoff you would have expected from something that started off so well.

4.5 out of 10. Worth the rent only if you are bored out of your skull.