Pathology

Corpses make hot lesbo residents horny

2008

Review: May 3, 2008

Director: Marc Schoelermann

Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Weston, Alyssa Milano, Lauren Lee Smith, Johnny Whitworth

If you want.

THE SETUP:

Bunch of med residents have a game where they kill people and challenge the others to figure out how.

DISCUSSION:

Ads for this started appearing around, and since I had never heard of it’s star, I thought the full title was Mild Ventimiglia Pathology. But no, it’s just Pathology, starring a guy called Milo Ventimiglia, who is apparently on Heroes. The movie starts with a video of young residents playing with corpses, then has a sober reveal of the Hippocratic oath, made to make us all consider the very wrongness of all that is to come. This was written by the guys who wrote Crank, who are apparently sad, bitter little people with a bleak view of human nature and the pleasures of living.

So Milo plays Ted Gray, who leaves his beautiful and rich fiancée Gwen [played by the splendor of Alyssa Milano] and reports to some city—never quite figured out where—to begin his residency at some important hospital. He is welcomed by the head of the department, but has an immediate dislike taken to him by Jake, the current hot-shot resident. The other residents are Griffin, who’s only character trait is being a total jerk, and Juliette, this redhead who thinks she’s really hot, and this Asian woman, there primarily to get horny and make out with Juliette at key points. There’s also a nerd resident who is not part of the group, but inexplicably likes Ted.

We are soon treated to a bunch of operating room gore, which will continue through all of the movie, and the residents doing middle school-type bullying of each other, like body checks all around and inviting Ted to drinks then making him get a cab home to his massively spacious apartment. On said drinking evening, the ponder such penetrating questions as who they would kill if they could kill anyone. Ted gives a big speech about how, philosophically, they should make no distinction and kill “anyone and everyone.” You, like me, may be sitting there wishing you could get through at least one movie about evil doctors without having to endure the old discussion about “playing God.”

So Jake, who has had an earlier speech about how humanity is just filth, takes Ted to a nasty whorehouse guarded by a big black fella, has an infant baby upstairs, and in one room, a tired old grandmother who is still hooking. Ted declines, but Jake fucks the old granny, saying “this is why I hate the living.” Ted is then surprised to find the doorman on the dissecting table the next day.

He has been pulled into the game, which is that these upstanding young residents kill people, justifying it that they were scumbags who deserved to die, and then challenge the other residents to figure out how they did it.

By now you will notice that this takes place in the particular brand of super-low-lit hospitals that only appear in movies [see Halloween II]. Or maybe the city is experiencing a brownout? In any case, it seems that no light bulb here is above 25 watts, and after awhile one gets a chuckle every time a character turns on a light. Ted is then introduced to his victim, a guy who killed his wife and two kids, then turned the gun on himself, but didn’t die. Even the nurse in the room says he’s “a waste of a good ICU.” Ted comes back at night and kills the fellow, who puts of quite a struggle for a fellow that did his best to kill himself. The guy shows up on the dissecting table, which makes the hot lesbo residents horny, and the young doctors smoke crack and have sex in the room while pulling apart the corpse. This caused one of the drunks in my theater, which attracts a lower-income crowd looking for a place to loiter for the entire afternoon, to say “Doctors smokin’ crack and everything!”

Now Juliette takes Ted out driving and they have lots of idiotic flirting [it is never questioned that Juliette is sexually irresistible, although in reality she is, uh, not, and has psychic red flags sticking out all over her].

She takes Ted to this fat guy’s trailer and tells him that he is her father who raped her as a child. They kill the guy, which makes them both so HOT that they have to go at it right there, in his trailer. Then they guy shows up on the table, blah, blah, repeat. Jake, who is supposedly somewhat jealous of Ted, says “She didn’t tell you that one about how that guy was her abusive father, did she?”

So we’re over halfway through, and not much has really happened and no character has developed. The guy in charge tells Ted that he “looks awful” and that he is “obviously using,” but he looks exactly the same as he has throughout the entire movie. Then he goes to his fiancée’s house and she announces that—surprise!—she’s coming to live with him. This is going to interfere with Ted’s whole murder / dissection / drugs / desperate sex with total skanks routine. So she does.

So, like, even though a child could tell where this is going and no one gives a fuck about this movie, I’m going to mark the following as “spoilers,” just because I’m such a gentleman.

SPOILERS > > >
So Gwen finds a crack pipe, which Ted says is Jake’s. Now, if the relationship between Ted and Jake seemed a tad bit to the homo before, it dips into the red zone now, when Jake starts throwing jealous fits that Ted’s fiancée is now around. Juliette also pretends to be jealous as tries to play off as though she has been callously tossed aside. God, it is all so tedious. Then the rest of the club bring a corpse in, and Griffin is lighting the crack pipe when they notice the gas is on... and the whole lab blows up! And I was like—that’s IT? That’s the climax? No build-up or whatever, Ted just blows them all up out of the clear blue and that’s the complete story?

No, turns out it’s not, but first we see that Ted is lingering around the explosion site, which seems pretty dumb to me, but it’s obviously there to hammer home the idea that he’s the one responsible. Then he realizes that Jake is still alive! Then he runs home [they don’t have cabs in this city?], but not in time to save Gwen from Jake—she’s DEAD! Then Ted insists on doing the autopsy on Gwen, which seemed a little unnecessarily nasty as we know and like Gwen, then watch her body get sliced open and organs pulled out. I thought Ted was going to use the opportunity to frame Jake for the murder, but no… Now I’m going to tell you the very end, in part to save you from having to watch the movie, so be warned.

So through some circumstance just as ludicrous as the rest of the movie, Jake has Ted in the lab all tied up, and it looks like curtains for him. Then—out of the blue—the nerd resident—the one who has had maybe a combined 39 seconds of screen time so far and pretty much zero character development—shows up to jab Jake in the neck with some tranquilizer that will leave him alive as they dissect him, which they do—the end! This is an even lazier variation of the “deus ex machina” ending in which a tornado [or rain of frogs?] or something completely unforeseen comes in and changes everything with no need to prepare for it in the story, and is a pretty pathetic trick, even when done with a tiny little modicum of effort, which is more than can be said here.
< < < SPOILERS END

This movie will appeal most to those who like to torture animals. I haven’t seen Hostel and other “torture porn” movies, but my understanding is that they include a story that has some resonance and are fairly well put together. This one is just a sick fascination with guts and gore and dead people, and I pity the poor people who made it, if this really represents their view of life and other humans. Everyone involved with this movie should be embarrassed, and the writers and director might actually consider suicide. Just a suggestion, guys.

If Milo whatshisname can act, I saw no evidence of it in this movie. He seems to think that by making himself as blank as possible, at least he won’t deliver a BAD performance. His character is EXACTLY the same from scene to scene, he never seems to get upset or interested or concerned or… anything. When they inevitably remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers yet again, I can recommend him as the lead pod person. Everyone else is just trying to be as dirty and nasty and venal as possible, thinking it’s going to come off as badass or something, not just like they’re bottom-of-the-barrel actors who obviously have no moral compass or are desperate to appear in anything.

I saw this because one review cast it as being so over-the-top ludicrous and desperate to appear “evil” that it was kind of fun, and several of the positive reviews on the IMDb seem to reflect this. Well, yes, it’s ludicrous, but not in a fun way. And even if you don’t care about just how repugnant it is, it’s still shittily made, shoddily written, poorly shot, and terribly acted. OH, and BORING. It is just shit.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

I wouldn’t, but if you like to torture animals or are an aspiring serial killer, there might be something in it for you.