Review by Tristan Bishop
Medical-themed horror is all around at the moment, from the diseased queasiness of films like Errors Of The Human Body and Brandon Cronenberg’s brilliant Antiviral, to the body-modification themes of American Mary. The morbid fear of hospitals, illness and surgery is a universal one, and has been represented in film since the medium was young, with horror stars such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff playing a stream of sinister doctors with disturbing intentions in various poverty row productions, and with 1978’s Coma proving the subgenre can have serious commercial clout.
The Facility is a British crack at hospital horror, the debut feature of one Ian Clark, which brings a slasher-style set-up to the mix, as seven volunteers arrive at the Limebrook Medical Clinic having signed up for testing to make some extra cash. Each of them is to be injected with a new drug called Pro9, and will be kept under observation in the facility for two weeks. Of course, for some reason there is no internet in the facility, and a phone embargo is in place, but each of the volunteers agrees to the measures as they are being paid £2000 for their efforts. The other stipulations are no sex, no drugs, no alcohol and no exercise.
It won’t be a hell of a jump for most horror heads to see exactly where this is going. The most loathsome character in the film, Jed (an estate agent no less, which I’m sure most readers will agree is already good reason to hate him) is determined to show off his ripped body at any turn, and goes about his exercises despite the warnings. Of course Jed soon has a scary psychotic reaction to the drug, and is carted off by the doctors, leaving the other ‘guinea pigs’ fearing for themselves. (The original title of this film was Guinea Pigs, in fact: possibly changed either to avoid confusion with the Japanese gore series, or to ensure lovers of cute furry animals don’t go renting it by mistake.) Of course, some of the others start to exhibit signs that all is not well with the testing too, and eventually they realize they are locked in the medical centre alone, unsure who will turn next.
Despite a fairly hackneyed set-up (and a large thematic debt to John Carpenter’s The Thing), The Facility actually works quite well. Like many films by first time feature directors it could do with a bit of pruning to get the pacing right (although the film only runs around 80 mins), but for most of the running time Clark manages to keep us interested. The script is pretty average but howler-free, though what really saves the film are some decent, convincing performances – two of which are from Welsh actors Nia Roberts (wife of My Little Eye director Marc Evans) and the very promising young actor Aneurin Barnard (hitherto to be known as ‘The Welsh Elijah Wood’), who seems to be carving a career for himself out of low-budget horror at the moment (not a bad thing in my opinion), having starred in quick succession in this; the, um, slightly muddled (if rather likeable) Elfie Hopkins; and Citadel (which I reviewed at Abertoir). Aneurin always puts a good performance in regardless of the quality of the overall film and here is no exception, with his character Adam (a naïve student) being easily the most likeable here. Also on hand is Steve Everts (From TV’s Shameless and Looking For Eric), playing professional ‘labrat’ Morty, who has unnerving stories to tell about previous medical trials he has been involved in. The rest of the cast acquit themselves well enough, although the characterizations are mostly on the unlikeable side.
My only real beef with the film is the over-abundance of shaky camera, which can be of great effect if you’re filming a 28 Days Later-styled zombie chase, but serves no real purpose in a scene with two characters chatting in a car park, other than to make viewers feel a little bit nauseous. Speaking of nauseous, there is a lot of blood up on the screen in this one, and a couple of effective gore scenes, but nothing too disturbing for the hardened horror fan (unless, like me, you really hate needles!)
In all The Facility is worth a rental. It won’t be appearing on any top ten lists but it passes the time adequately and efficiently, which may be just what the doctor ordered.
The Facility is out now on Region 2 DVD from Momentum.