DVD SPOT - Pathology (2008)

I am going to attempt a rather more mature review of this film, despite my exasperation with these terrible horror films and their hideous flaws. Maybe my rage clouded my reviews of Shrooms and Shelter, but seriously, they were that bad. Pathology didn't make me angry. It merely disappointed me. I was never expecting great things from it anyhow, but it was still a long 85 minutes. Basically, Pathology is a film starring Milo Ventimiglia (y'know, one of the Petrellis from Heroes) as a pathology student called Ted, a prodigy among his peers, and ends up falling in with a very bad bunch at his medical school. Said bad bunch are essentially a bunch of hedonistic death-fetishists, getting together in the abandoned wing of a hospital and each committing murder in an elaborate fashion so that the others can try to work out how they did it. What follows is an orgy of murder, sex and mayhem that goes on far longer than it really should.

Here is the core problem of Pathology. It is trying to be an American Psycho-esque exploration of what happens when Pathologists grow too close to their profession. Its core problem is that it is too lurid and sensationalist to really work. The characters of course are not likeable, but they are not meant to be. I understand this. Here, again, is why American Psycho worked; it wasn't afraid to show us Patrick Bateman's crimes, but we're supposed to watch and be completely horrified by him as an individual. While we are mildly horrified I suppose, Pathology is so desperate to show how depraved these individuals all are that it lays on scene after scene showing their gross misdeeds, a series of tedious sequences that actually dominate a majority of the running time. This is of course up until the point that Ted (Ventimiglia) finally realizes that, hey, all this mass murder might actually be a bad thing and the people he's associating with are actually murderous crazies.

Ted wrestles with a dilemma.

Ted's nemesis is Jake Gallo (Michael Weston - and another Jake!), and also it is implied, the other side of his coin, his dark half. The two are at odds the entire film, and do not even like each other, so it is beyond my understanding as to why Ted even decides to join Jake's sordid little gang. Of course he is drawn to the seductive/slutty Juliette, another member of the group, and embarks on an affair with her even as his loving fiance Gwen (Alyssa Milano) sleeps at home and for the whole film, never suspects a thing. After long drawn out scenes of 'look how screwed up these guys are', we finally encounter Ted's rather pliant moral conscience. I think the hilarity of his change of heart is at its apex in a scene where Jake has butchered three girls in the abandoned ward, and it is only he and Ted. Jake is of course bugfuck crazy, covered in blood, and short of rubbing his face in a set of intestines and playing the xylophone on their ribs, he could not look more mad. Ted looks around, utterly shocked at what he has seen, doing a 'how could you do this?' speech. It's a little late to be growing a conscience, Ted. This is a man you understand who about 15 minutes of running time previously put a liquid nitrogen compound in a man's inhaler and watched as his lungs froze solid, then did the nasty with his accomplice on the table next to the corpse. I think the expression 'pot, kettle and black' comes to mind. The only reason your sympathies in any way lie with Ted is that he is marginally less repulsive than Jake, I guess.

Michael Weston: The definition of subtle acting.

There's a worrying male fantasy aspect to the female characters. The girlfriend character, Gwen, spends the film oblivious to Ted's indiscretions while still engaging in regular sex sessions with him, and Juliette is a slutty swings-either-way obsessive who becomes crazed over Ted, and the other girl just seems to be a slutty lesbian with a thing for Juliette. Notice any themes here? It's a vaguely virgin-whore complex, where Gwen is essentially a wonderful, innocent girl who is unsullied by the film's events, and the other girls are just promiscuous whores. Then again, all men are presented as borderline rapists with psychotic tendencies, so I suppose the men dont' come off too well either, but it's all a bit suspect. The best character in the film is Dr. Quentin Morris, played by John De Lancie (Q from Star Trek! Woohoo!), who manages to relieve every scene he's in. It's not a glowing performance per se, but it's far less irritating than Ventimiglia glowering into the distance and Michael Weston running around doing his 'I'm kerrrazzzy!!' acting.

'Don't worry. Soon, we will be sleeping together.'

The film is boring, predictable and non-frightening. When Ted finally gets round to doing what he should have done earlier, specifically kicking Jake's arse, it is too late and things wind to an inevitable conclusion. Marc Scholermann's film is unsubtle, tedious and clunky and to be honest is just a dime-a-dozen slasher. It also has a worrying opinion of those who work in the business of pathology, seemingly implying that working with dead bodies turns you lunatics like the characters in this film. Still, it's not as if many people will actually see this absurd film.