The Sickhouse (2008)

As a rule I tend to judge a film by watching it myself. Taking heed of reviews, I thought this one may be worth a go. The opening titles were correct for the middle ages, especially the bird-like masks which as said in the film were worn by plague doctors & beaks stuffed with herbs and spices to 'prevent' breathing in the disease.The film begins with the typical headstrong protagonist despite warning wanting to investigate a newly discovered vault in an archaeological dig site (old London hospital) that could be potentially a bio-hazard & is advised to stay away. Of course she doesn't, at the same time we see a bunch of London teenagers on a jolly for their friends birthday driving erratically - cue crash. On deciding to peg it from police they hot-foot it into the same (closed down) hospital as the protagonist. They all meet up and chaos ensues.Nothing particularly striking, entertaining for people who gravitate towards horror genre. A different plot from most, same clichés - judge it on your own merit.

Why an 8 rating? The film is far from perfect, the story was interesting, not fully realised. Acting was great (in my opinion) overall. Effects were very good. Quick summary, i am interested in the future of the cast and crew, they didn't quite nail it in this film, but they got close, very close! So why a rating of 8? The premise of the story was great, it did get a bit lost as we progress through the film, great potential, very good try overall.Acting was superb, each and every character was well portrayed, thumbs up to the actors and i presume the director, for getting the performances he required.Effects were good, maybe too much of it though, there was a lot of camera movement in a lot of scenes, so i did not see the need for a lot of the special effects.Camera, read above, a wee bit too much movement of the camera for my liking, it was almost like they were trying to portray it as an art film (where visuals give you a meaning(or many meanings), as opposed to straight dialogue with visuals). Still, interesting visuals, but a wee bit over the top for my liking.Editing. Hmmm, tricky one! I liked it, but not in the sense of watching the film, very interesting ideas in the editing, but once again, it seems as if the Editor/Director wanted to convey chaos, way too much? There was way too many cuts/shots jumping around really. Great for a shorter film, i guess, but a feature length, probably not. Apart from dealing with lots of camera movements, then the editing was probably not bad overall, but yet very artistic editing.Direction. Overall a good job, the actors played their roles very well, even in moments where the story seems to have fallen down (it does happen, sadly, near the end). Good work overall! Budget!!! IMDb states it was approx $2 million dollars to make this film! If that is the case, then i would drop the rating to a 5 at best. I honestly do not understand why it can cost that amount of money to make, what i view, as a low budget film, and a very good one at that! So in Summary, good acting, promising story, not really gory, not really scary, but the story and the characters kept me involved to watch the film, even to the extent of writing this review (so it did many things right!). Maybe the story did not warrant a full feature, maybe 1 hour running time or even a 30 min short would of being a wiser choice, it was a brave decision to make this into a feature length, and they nearly nailed it.I look forward to other work from the cast and crew, and maybe, just one day, they will hit the nail on the head, and create the next big summer blockbuster! We all hope...P.S. To the Director, i look forward to your comments on my little Werewolf short i am creating, its gonna be poor, but its a zero budget affair and will be on Youtube! We all start somewhere, right!? :)

I was hopeful when I read the description on Netflix. Haunted hospital or asylum just creeps me out. Too bad the premise has never been done well. This film is no exception. There has to be one that is better than The Sickhouse, Session 9, the remake of House on Haunted Hill, the Attic Expeditions, etc. because they all sucked for myriad reasons. At least "Haunted" had some actually scary moments, not just psychological mishmash and gruesome imagery.It was too jumpy. Right in the middle of the tension-filled hall-stalk or door-open, the scene cuts and jumps to a map for a few moments and then back to the scene, where nothing happens.The plague doctor ghost villain was certainly scary in appearance, and his plague-victim ghost minions as well, but more back story was needed to set the mood and really explain things. They were just there and a freaky cult was mentioned. They should have gone more into it. That was actually intriguing and had major scare potential. Instead we get the same stalking villain-and-minions, teenage chavs getting offed (well, that was pretty good) in bizarre ways, and an undeveloped connection between several plague doctor cult killers.Of course, it had the obligatory sole-survivor-as-reborn-villain-for-sequel setup, too, which just pisses me off. DONE TO DEATH.

I won't say this is the best horror film I have ever watched but it is certainly not the worst either. Interesting story line about the plague doctors (who by the way wore masks shaped like bird beaks to keep plague at bay) and an unknown cult. In this day of conspiracies it is reasonable to think it could have happened. It had some really decent gore in it and is an OK way to spend a couple of hours. I must say Gina Phillips is making a career out of making horror films and most of them have been good enough to watch. Like this one. You have to keep an open mind with most horror films now days and this is definitely worth a quick look when you've got nothing else to watch. I bought in the 2 for $10 bin @ the local big name super store so at least I got my money's worth. And the ending was very interesting