People really went at this movie hard, but I really liked it. I would consider it a Thriller vs. Horror and also would say it would be a HBO quality "lifetime" movie. :)
Vanessa Shaw, Dr. Mathis, a psychiatrist dealing with past trauma from a young patient that attempted suicide in her office years back,is now slowly trying to get her life back. Unbeknownst to her, her trauma is just beginning.
Vanessa Shaw plays the groggy, medicated doctor role very well. She is in her own therapy with a colleague, newly dating a new man, rekindling her friendship with an old childhood friend, and living back at her deceased parents house. Vanessa plays her role very realistically in being very unwilling to talk or share anything personal in her life with her friends, boyfriend and even psychiatrist. This is keeping her very isolated and dependent on her medications and holding her back from her own trauma.
She hesitantly takes on a patient, Alex, that also deals with very heavy trauma leaving him nearly agoraphobic and physically disfigured. Kevin Rahm also plays this very well under prosthetic make up. You can feel his anxiety and resentment. They begin their therapy, and slowly move into a unethical exchange with him later wandering into her home drugged and incoherent, Her rushing to his house after he overdoses, and slow work through piecing together his trauma.
Dr. Mathis starts show signs of inflamed PTSD with sleep paralysis, flash backs of her past patient Nora, and high anxiety. She starting seeing waking hallucinations of Nora, which prompts her to go to the psych ward that Nora apparently was put in after the attempted suicide. You find out that Nora was released, and that Dr. Mathis's hallucinations may not be crazy after all. She also views a therapy tape that alludes Nora's trauma involves many years of incestuous molestation by her father in turn she claims she killed him.
Dr. Mathis then finds herself in another lucid dream being chased throughout her home by a deranged Nora, eventually killing Nora in self defense with a wine screw. Scenes shift and all the sudden Dr. Mathis is in the psych ward being accused, then proved through video that she did not kill Nora, but her boyfriend Miles, and is told that Nora killed herself several days earlier. She is committed to the ward until she eventually puts together that Alex is actually Nora's dad, and his face disfiguration was a result of Nora finally lashing out at her predator father.
Dr. Mathis finally escapes the ward and finds herself kidnapped by Alex who has the plans to "punish" her for "poisoning" Nora against him. During the last stand off, Dr. Mathis also realizes that her friend Clara and her Doctor were also casualties, and Miles was killed only after Dr. Mathis had been heavily drugged by Alex. The battle of the brains start, as Dr. Mathis is able to by time to cut herself loose, injury Alex enough to escape freely into her house and finish him off in a gruesome ending of her ripping off his "transplanted"face. You end the film with Dr. Mathis finding Alex sitting on her "psych" couch, dead, missing his face. Cut.
As many movies these days, the ending will not give you peace of mind, as many loose ends are still floating. No one will believe Dr. Mathis was drugged, or that Alex tried to attack her especially after all the witnesses are dead. Which leaves you thinking, even though she escaped this nightmare, its only a matter of time before she is thrown back in the ward and they throw away the key.
Not for all, but definitely entertaining.
Vanessa Shaw, Dr. Mathis, a psychiatrist dealing with past trauma from a young patient that attempted suicide in her office years back,is now slowly trying to get her life back. Unbeknownst to her, her trauma is just beginning.
Vanessa Shaw plays the groggy, medicated doctor role very well. She is in her own therapy with a colleague, newly dating a new man, rekindling her friendship with an old childhood friend, and living back at her deceased parents house. Vanessa plays her role very realistically in being very unwilling to talk or share anything personal in her life with her friends, boyfriend and even psychiatrist. This is keeping her very isolated and dependent on her medications and holding her back from her own trauma.
She hesitantly takes on a patient, Alex, that also deals with very heavy trauma leaving him nearly agoraphobic and physically disfigured. Kevin Rahm also plays this very well under prosthetic make up. You can feel his anxiety and resentment. They begin their therapy, and slowly move into a unethical exchange with him later wandering into her home drugged and incoherent, Her rushing to his house after he overdoses, and slow work through piecing together his trauma.
Dr. Mathis starts show signs of inflamed PTSD with sleep paralysis, flash backs of her past patient Nora, and high anxiety. She starting seeing waking hallucinations of Nora, which prompts her to go to the psych ward that Nora apparently was put in after the attempted suicide. You find out that Nora was released, and that Dr. Mathis's hallucinations may not be crazy after all. She also views a therapy tape that alludes Nora's trauma involves many years of incestuous molestation by her father in turn she claims she killed him.
Dr. Mathis then finds herself in another lucid dream being chased throughout her home by a deranged Nora, eventually killing Nora in self defense with a wine screw. Scenes shift and all the sudden Dr. Mathis is in the psych ward being accused, then proved through video that she did not kill Nora, but her boyfriend Miles, and is told that Nora killed herself several days earlier. She is committed to the ward until she eventually puts together that Alex is actually Nora's dad, and his face disfiguration was a result of Nora finally lashing out at her predator father.
Dr. Mathis finally escapes the ward and finds herself kidnapped by Alex who has the plans to "punish" her for "poisoning" Nora against him. During the last stand off, Dr. Mathis also realizes that her friend Clara and her Doctor were also casualties, and Miles was killed only after Dr. Mathis had been heavily drugged by Alex. The battle of the brains start, as Dr. Mathis is able to by time to cut herself loose, injury Alex enough to escape freely into her house and finish him off in a gruesome ending of her ripping off his "transplanted"face. You end the film with Dr. Mathis finding Alex sitting on her "psych" couch, dead, missing his face. Cut.
As many movies these days, the ending will not give you peace of mind, as many loose ends are still floating. No one will believe Dr. Mathis was drugged, or that Alex tried to attack her especially after all the witnesses are dead. Which leaves you thinking, even though she escaped this nightmare, its only a matter of time before she is thrown back in the ward and they throw away the key.
Not for all, but definitely entertaining.