I made it to this point in the movie when I realized I got up at 5:30 a.m. to watch a guy keep falling asleep. 😂😂😂 And then I wondered if Lisa Marie Bowman (follow her) ever gets up before 6 a.m. to do a movie review.
Notes-
- religious theming
- medical fetish attraction
- psychologically exploratory
- physically triggering (viewer empathy)
Checking our viewer stash of snacks and notes. I made popcorn balls this week. *~*Awesome*~*.
Scroll at your own risk if you haven't seen this movie yet.
Disclaimer- I got phone pix of my TV while the DVD was playing. This movie is unrated and there may be a few NSFW pix in this review. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."
George just woke up from a horrible nightmare.
Idyllic. Fake.
Does that mean he's fake falling?
Me after 2 hours of sleep all night.
Adam and Eve motif. My first reaction to this is maybe sorta not a good idea... We all know what happened there.
Regardless of some of the medical procedure mistakes made in this movie, anyone who has felt medically compromised will likely feel gut wrenched at some point in this movie. My own tension was horrible, having way too much experience, made worse by the dvd disc being weirdly haunted to where it kept unpausing itself when I left the room, not normal in my player.
Just a reminder that I'm watching this movie to see whether Tom Cavanagh shaves and/or brushes his teeth, a quest I'm on to see how many film projects involve his oral and face hygiene because I'm a little obsessive about brushing my own teeth all my life and it's not often I run into an actor brushing their teeth on camera as much as Tom does. If I'd been at all thinkier about planning this quest out, I'd have started counting bathrooms he's been in, as well. I'm starting to wonder how many film hours he's got into bathrooms.
Anway, as such, I'm not going to heavily review the movie itself that much, but what the heck, you can have some gratuitous Tom shots. You're welcome.
Temp skipping a bunch of story, I made it up to this point where we see George looking over at a painting about the time I had started questioning whether this weird hospital experience were a sort of allegory for his real life.
Does this painting change? We get a painting showing up once in awhile, but it's not that noticeable until you ask if the painting changes. Note George's face reflected in the painting way across the room. Is he being projected into a thought world? Is he somehow projecting?
Things of note so far about George's real life-
- his son is obsessed with shamanic surgeries
- his daughter's girlfriend's emoglam is off the hook
- his wife is obsessed with religious art and sickened by a whimsical birthday gift George got of a blood red figure stabbed by knives
- his brother travels globally getting involved in dangerous charity work, which puts George on the defensive as a materialistic IT company man
- his neighbor is doing very well financially because of George's advice
- his lawyer has no empathetic boundaries when it comes to fear porn
George wants to know what's in the East Wing.
That face you make when you half rip your stitches just reaching for the phone.
Don't ya hate it when the nurse clams up, too? I mean, I kept thinking this guy was in George's imagination until she clammed up. (Digging deeper, is George's imaginary nurse friend clamming up? I just lost what sense of reality there was.)
I can't help feeling that Zoe is an amalgam of George's kids.
I've seen enough Tom Cavanagh now to know this is Tom's iconic face. This face tips the balance and then you plunge further into story. You know you're about to go behind the veil.
And to the East Wing they go...
Conspiracy theory heaven. All those files... Of course, George found his own file. It was gross.
And we see an insinutation of children being farmed through other children.
It's hard not to jump to unknown conclusions at this point, but they are so far setting the hospital up to be a cover for a fraudulent money laundering scam, citing facts that demonstrate this could be true nationwide and worldwide, and I can't help wondering (true or not) whether this is also a picture of George's life somehow, a fraudulent scam covered with a surface of nice life.
Skipping loads more stuff. (Apologies to sex scene enthusiasts.) We're about to go full psyche here. I will forego other screenshots in favor of George's good leg while I keep speculating on the movie.
Please note that these closeups of 'human parts', as it were, come hot on the heels of seeing the despair of a dirty room packed full of depressed and despondent nonwhite people waiting to be medically examined, and the only attendent around is a sort of receptionist, an older Sister in white Catholic looking garb calling out numbers, as opposed to names. Everyone in this room is nameless, everyone is beaten down somehow, and none of them try to escape, as George does.
In earlier scenes we get closeups in the wheelchair with George more clothed underneath, and since I skipped so much, you don't know he's literally fresh from his recovery room after surgery, insisting that Zoe take him on another tour, where he wheeled away even from her and hijacked a broken elevator down to ground floor to arrive in what looks like a third world hellhole. But just outside this door is first world sunshine and freedom. His white privilege is failing him. Yeah, you get a LOT of stuff in this movie.
That bloody stump is missing parts. That good leg is available parts. We are not getting face shots in these scenes. We are getting someone desperately clawing to escape becoming more parts. Seriously, what was up with that weird black bird flying around that old guy? The bird from the painting.
I know, the lighting is just weird enough to look like old bruises moving around that good leg.
If someone grabbed my ankle like that, their face would be smashed up and bleeding because I am so ticklish. I doubt morphine would have made it easier to drag me in.
In a really elaborate psychological sense, George seems eviscerated by something coming up in his life, and one has to wonder if this is just about turning 40. We've had so many things dragged into this movie between all the layers, to me it's looking like a damning life review that goes far beyond possible fixations and personal cover ups and hurt relationships. The disease resistant plant, the magic bottle, the knife set, the photo album- all those birthday gift memories came back full force as a TV ad *after* his leg was amputated. Can the surreal get any more surreal?
Yes. Yes, it can.
You know you're a minecrafter when you think, "Glowstone!"
During another look back at the night before, along with a huge load of more weird hinting, we see George reaching out to shake his son's hand, as if this is so long and not just good night.
After the other short glimpses we've seen of him interacting with his kids, this scene comes along and blows us out of the water about the divergence between his inner world and his world with his family. Is George using his son to narrate how he's feeling inside? Is he trying to see himself through other eyes?
Tell you what, I'm going to drop this like a hot rock right there and say GET THIS MOVIE. It's not anything like the trailer, it's freaky deeper than it lets on, and you can't tell how twisted this can still possibly get, like literally, I stopped the movie right here just so I could finish this and then hog the rest for myself.
Are you up to this level of psyche in a blender reveal? You can buy or rent this movie via several outlets including Amazon and youtube for as little as 2.99 or 3.99, and I've seen it on ebay for 2.99, other outlets around 4.99 and up. If you're burned out on Halloween movies, this is a great one for the really strange 2020 we've all had.
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