Friday 8 January 2010

BEYOND REMEDY

CONTAINS MODERATE SPOILERS! ACHTUNG!

There's not really a vast amount I can say about this one: it's one of a thousand tolerable but indifferent horror cheapies cluttering up the rental shelves: proficient, professional, but scarcely innovative or excitingly original. Though it's in English, it's actually German, and comes from the Uwe Boll stable (produced by his company, though the man himself is only billed in the "Thanks" section of the end credits scroll).

Beyond Remedy is the old routine about a bunch of photogenic types gathering at a remote and spooky location, ostensibly to have their phobias eradicated by a mysterious scientist. This time they're all medical students, and they're in an abandoned hospital where a careless doctor once killed thirteen children with the wrong drugs. Might that have something to do with the homicidal maniac (in chain mail, no less) offing the young and pretty phobics in ways grisly enough to garner an 18 certificate? Is it one of the phobics themselves? Maybe the apparent hero, who's apparently been cast solely because he looks like Tobey Maguire? Or one of the staff - guest star Rick Yune (who's worked in the Boll arena before), or maybe the boffin in charge, who declaims all his lines like an angry Gielgud at the National while everyone else is acting along the lines of idiot victims in a generic slasher pic?

I've actually got a soft spot for unrestrained overacting in genre films (connoisseurs of eye-rolling mad scientists are advised to track down a 1934 cheapie called Maniac, which couldn't be hammier if it said "oink") so it didn't bother me here. It all climaxes in a series of absurd revelations and unhinged motivations. Beyond Remedy is overall fairly dumb - the heroine is scared of knives, which doesn't make sense if you're studying to be a surgeon - and it's nothing we haven't seen before. But it's engaging enough to get by as an evening's undemanding rental.

**

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