Harvard Medical School graduate Dr. Ted Grey arrives at one of the nation’s most prestigious Pathology programs and is quickly noticed by the program’s privileged and elite band of pathology interns who invite him into their crowd. It is also here, where he is introduced to Dr. Jake Gallo, who brings him to a secluded wing, where he and four others indulge in their after-hours, extra-curricular activities…finding ways to commit the perfect murder.
Well, to say I had a few concerns that Talyor and Neveldine were involved in this movie, was an understatement, I have never been a huge fan of theirs (Gamer aside) and when reading what this movie was about, I honestly thought it was just another angle for them deliver another slice of their extreme and outrageous movie making to the paying public. Yes, they do push the envelope in this and the graphic and brutal nature of some scenes could well prompt the fence-sitter to switch off, but if they persevered, they’d find that these scenes, in fact support the development of the story and it’s surprisingly well developed characters – and before you say it Milo Ventimiglia is actually pretty good as Ted – so please, put his Heroes and Gamer roles to one side if you can.
This movie is basically about the lengths some will go to prove they are the best, in this case the main antagonist is Dr. Gallo, who threatened by Ted’s arrival, draws on Ted’s own large ego, to lure him into deadly game where random victims are killed by the doctors themselves in inventive way and brought to the aforementioned secluded wing for analysis – which is signposted by Gallo’s line of ‘Let’s take a look inside’, where the students discuss the possible causes of death while smoking crack and occasionally fondling each other.
In addition to this Ted, who is engaged to Gwen (Alyssa Milano who we all fancied from Who’s The Boss with Tony Danza) – gets involved ahem….romantically involved with another of his peers Juliette….ok scratch that, they just in the words of Clinton, ‘have relations’, graphically, wherever they can, near dead bodies, after creating a dead body, probably on a dead body in the Taylor and Neveldine directors cut.
The upshot of this is that it has now put Gwen’s life in danger as Gallo is also seeing Juliette and as you can imagine, his ego is slightly bruised – I won’t spoil the rest, but as you can imagine, when a newbie steals your professional crown and your missus, you’re going to be a bit peeved.
This is a decent movie, don’t let the combo of Taylor, Neveldine and Ventimiglia put you off as there are solid performances from the whole cast and equally impressive is how the film was able to make outlandish, twisted activities of the characters seem in some way, natural and even plausible given the actual story. I highly recommend giving this film a shot, even if it isn’t a genre you’d typically see.