Coventry Review of Sublime

Sublime (2007 Video)

These routine operations cost you an arm and a leg

[5/10 · 3 November 2007]

Well this is surely one of the most complex new horror movies this year. Complex to follow as well as to analyze and to recommend to others. "Sublime" undoubtedly benefices from a handful of good or even downright great ideas, an ideally petrifying setting and a fair amount of genuine suspense, but at other times (most of the time, regretfully) the film is simply too dull, too derivative and far too implausible. This movie is actually a psychological thriller but it shamelessly got promoted as a hardcore gruesome horror flick (it's from the same label that produced "Rest Stop"), and this probably raised a couple of wrong expectations. "Sublime" is not a wild and savage slasher set inside a hospital, but one person's nightmarish journey into the world of medical blunders, agonizing fear, isolation and comatose hallucinations. Only one day after his fortieth birthday, George Grieves (Thomas Cavanagh, who occasionally appears in the comical hospital show "Scrubs") enrolls into Mt. Abaddon Hospital for a routine colonoscopy procedure, but then of course the unthinkable happens. There's a mix-up between patients, an unnecessary operation with serious physical consequences, an infection with a flesh-eating bacteria and a lot of sinister hinting at what may or may not be going on in the ramshackle and supposedly closed down East Wing section. The script is okay and moderately intelligent, but also a bit too ambitious for its own good and even somewhat pretentious. Director Tony Krantz continuously attempts to mislead you through blending together hallucinations, 'realities' and flashback moments from during George's birthday party with family and friends. Obviously the sequences where George's gets menaced and even tortured by a bow-tie-wearing male black nurse called Mandingo (!), or has sex with the hot tattooed nurse are hallucinatory, but others are just confusing for no real reason. Perhaps the best element about "Sublime" is the painfully realistic portrayal of the hospital staff during a tragic and life-altering medical blunder like this. They are arrogant, defensive, seemingly careless and reluctant to take responsibility. Only the ravishing nurse is sincerely concerned, partly because she made a terrible mistake as well, but mostly because nurses are simply more involved with their patients. Fans of explicit bloodshed beware, as "Sublime" is nothing like the DVD-cover promises. There are only two or three mildly gruesome scenes while the overall emphasis lies on family drama and mysteriousness.