- Directed by Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
- Written by Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski
- Stars Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Ellen Wong, Kathleen Munroe
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkmSNt4moNg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
There’s lots of action that never really lets up. Things just get weirder and worse as the movie goes along. The acting is fine, the script is interesting, and the practical effects were excellent. We both liked it even more seeing it for the second time this round.
Spoilery Synopsis
There are gunshots in a house, and two men drag a person outside and set them on fire. Another person runs off into the fields. “They won’t get far,” says one of the men. We cut to someone in a white robe with a black triangle where the face ought to be. Credits roll.
Sheriff Danny is napping in his car in the woods. He gets a call on the radio that nothing is happening. He turns on the light and sees someone crawling alongside the road. The man is clearly injured, so the sheriff takes him to the nearest hospital. The old hospital is in the process of shutting down, but he calls ahead, and they can take the guy.
There are still patients and people in the hospital, including pregnant Maggie and her father. Dr. Powell says the baby may be on the way, and he’s stayed late to help. The stranger’s name is James, and the doctor says he’s probably just on drugs. Nursing assistant Kim doesn’t want to be there, but she’s busy putting files in boxes. Allison is Danyn’s ex, and she’s still coming to terms with losing their child.
Danny checks in on Nurse Beverly who is in the process of cutting off her own face after stabbing a patient in the eye. She comes at him with a knife so he shoots her. Danny gets upset and faints, but then he has a weird vision of a pyramid. When he wakes up, State Police Officer Mitchell is there; he’s come for James, who killed a bunch of people up north. He’s a jerk, and he takes Danny’s gun.
Danny tries to call in the shooting, but the phones are all out. He goes outside to try his radio, and his radio outside doesn’t work either. Then he sees the white-hooded cultist out there who jumps on him with a dagger. There are a bunch of cultists, and Danny runs back inside the hospital. The doctor and the nurses immediately get to work on him, but he has another dream about the weird place.
Mitchell reports that cultists have the hospital surrounded. The patient James starts screaming, and the two cops see a monster in the room with him. The two men from the burning we saw earlier come in and hold everyone at gunpoint. James stabs the doctor in the neck, and he dies very quickly. In the confusion, the monster grabs Mitchell and drags him away. The monster morphs and mutates right in front of them as the men shoot it and hack it with axes. They finally appear to kill the thing.
The two armed men, Father and Son, still want James. They don’t know who the cultists are, and they aren’t willing to explain much. Maggie goes into labor, so the medical people are all distracted. Then they notice that the dead doctor’s body is gone; Danny soon gets a phone call from the dead doctor, who may not have been as innocent as he let on– he has photos of the cultists on his desk.
They interrogate James with a hammer, and he says he killed the doctor as a favor to them, but he doesn’t know why the doctor got up again. He talks about what the cult made him do and watch. “They made people change.”
The men go down into the basement, where the fire happened. This is why the hospital is being demolished. They find a basement beneath the basement, but that’s not supposed to be there.
Allison wakes up on an operating table, and she talks to Dr. Powell, who is cutting himself apart. He lost his daughter years ago, and this is all his solution. He says that some of his earlier experiments are still down there; they were the ones who caused the fire. He pulls away the blanket, and Allison sees that something inside her is pulsating.
Danny’s group finds a triangular symbol on the floor, and both James and the Father recognize it from the cultist’s house.
Upstairs, Kim works on pregnant Maggie while her grandfather assists, but neither of them knows what they’re doing. Maggie finally gets tired of them whining and takes care of things herself. She goes off with the cultists.
Downstairs, Danny’s group runs into all kinds of mutant monstrosities. Before long, Danny’s the only one left. He eventually finds Allison, who is suddenly very pregnant– with a monster. He hacks her apart with his ax.
A triangle lights up behind Danny, and Dr. Powell talks to him. Maggie and the cultists come in and stab Danny in the back. Maggie approaches the triangle and Powell. The triangle becomes a doorway, and we see the big pyramid on the other side. The “baby” rips herself out of Maggie, and it’s quite something.
Out of nowhere, the Father and the Son come in, shotguns blazing, and start shooting the new monster. The Father douses himself in gasoline, and the Son sets him on fire to burn the creature as well. The Son then climbs out through the air vents. Danny stands up enough to hack Powell with his Ax, but that doesn’t stop him. Danny grabs Powell and they both go through the portal.
The son runs through the basement, pursued by one remaining monster as the walls squeeze shut. He gets out, back into the hospital. He runs into Kim, who’s been hiding safely in a closet all this time.
Danny and Allison look up at the alien sky. The giant, floating pyramid is there. They’re on the other side. Now what?
Commentary
This is mostly done with practical effects, and you can tell. The creatures look really good. This was my second viewing of this, and I liked it a lot more this time around.
The monsters and the cultists both tie into two old John Carpenter films, “The Thing” and “Prince of Darkness” and there are many other similarities as well. There’s also a lot of Lovecraftian imagery and themes involved behind the cultists, although we never get an explanation about that.
The sets are really good, and the acting is fine. I’d have liked a bit more explanation from the characters that did know what was happening; as it was, there were too many secrets to be realistic. Someone needed to pause for just one minute and talk this all out.
It’s very atmospheric and weird. Nice!