Sunday, January 26, 2014

Pathology (2008)

I do not dislike this 'movie' because it is 'sick' or 'disturbing' or anything else other viewers brand it with. I dislike it because it is unbelievably written, badly acted, and takes itself so seriously that you are hardly even able to laugh at the pure ridiculousness of the script. "Pathology" features poor performances from Milo Ventimiglia (who displays about four or five facial expressions, tops, but mostly gives us his broody face) and Michael Weston (who wins the honor of being the most unbelievable villain of the year.)

Drinking game time.

. Take a drink whenever a cadaver is shown or discussed.

. Take a drink whenever there is unnecessary sex scene.

. Take a drink whenever someone gives someone else a intense or significant look.

. Drink every time you snort at the pure idiocy of the script.

   Ted Grey (disgustingly transparent symbolism in name, check!) is a med student who leaves his girlfriend (Alyssa Milano) to study at a morgue. He is immediately ostracized by the other students. When he makes a 'deep' comment about the innate evil of humanity at a bar, he temporarily wins their respect and they let him in on their secret- they have formed a group where they kill an undesirable member of society and the others try to guess how the murder was committed, using their med school skills.

   The very beginning and the very end are... not bad, but the rest of the movie is so terrible you might have to pinch yourself to stay awake. "Pathology" is full of pseudo-profound comments about the darkness that abides within human beings that an emo eighth-grader could have written. The characters are singularly unlikable- it would be hard to find a more reprehensible bunch than featured in this movie, and I'm not letting Ted off the hook.

  The moral issues behind he killings of the undesirables, as immoral as some of them are, are never explored in any depth (remember, they 'deserve' it,) while some of the scenes are so silly that you'd have to be high on a gigantic amount of cannibus to find any value in them. Take for instance, the scene where Ted and femme fatale med student Juliette (Lauren Lee Smith) get intimate at the scene of the murder they have committed, having passionate sex across from the dead body. Are we supposed to take this shit seriously??
Ooh, better make this face throughout the flick so I look 'intense.'

   Which brings me to another subject, the acting. Ventimiglia can't act. Weston can't act as the main baddie, 'Jake.' Smith tries to play a sexy-but-dangerous stone cold killer, but tries so hard that the performance simply comes off as awkward and inexperienced. The movie continually tries to be as immoral and sleazy as possible, but what does it achieve? Nothing.

   "Pathology", quite simply, is bad. It is so bad, in fact, that I nearly didn't care that my mom's idiot dog was barking in my ear through the second half of the movie because it almost mercifully blocked out some of the awful dialogue. I hated this movie. It is terribly made in almost every respect, and I don't want to hear its title ever again.
                                               Rating-
                                                       2.5/10



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