MADHOUSE (2004)

A bespectacled Leonard plays an intern arriving at Cunningham Hall, a huge mental institution, after completing his studies, with hopes of making his résumé look good and maybe even suggest a few improvements. Enter his superior, surly chief administrator played by Lance Henriksen, who doesn’t take kindly to suggestions for improvement and essentially tells Leonard that Cunningham Hall merely houses the patients. More agreeable is the pretty Jordan Ladd, a fellow employee who helps show Leonard the ropes. Things seem all well and good until staff members and patients start turning up dead and Leonard starts seeing visions of a young boy.
You see, this ain’t no ordinary nuthouse. For starters, Lance Henriksen is the head doctor, immediately sounding off alarm bells that something not quite right is going on here. But it doesn’t stop there, a slumming Natasha Lyonne (Blade: Trinity, Robots) wanders around the set as one of the patients, and staff members are played by Leslie Jordan (the momma’s boy killer from Boston Legal) and Patrika Darbo (Days of Our Lives). Not to mention the institution itself! Down in the basement, things are ugly, decrepit and foreboding. This is where the most dangerous and depraved patients are housed, including the mysterious patient 44, who offers some cryptic clues to Leonard about what is going on, but never once steps out of the shadows.

I’ve probably made this film sound pretty darn interesting, I mean, the mental institution is always a welcome horror staple, in classics like Bedlam and Asylum. It’s certainly a fairly watchable film, for the most part. Unfortunately, outside of some terrific atmosphere brought about by director William Butler (in conjunction with the cinematographer and production design), and some welcome graphic displays of violence, this is extremely lazy, formulaic stuff that never really gets off the ground. The story has been done to death, and this film adds absolutely nothing to this subgenre. Oh sure, Ladd is very sweet in her role, and there are electrocutions and decapitations here and there (and they’re terrific), but the story is so damn tired you won’t care how it all ends up. And several points off for resorting to irritating quick-cuts in certain places. I hate that nonsense.
As for the acting, Leonard (yes, the guy from The Blair Witch Project) tries his underplaying method acting best in the lead role, but at times he mumbles his way into invisibility. And yet, he seems to be overplaying it at the same time. It’s like he’s channeled Nic Cage, Andrew McCarthy and Ryan Phillippe all at the same time. But more importantly, he just doesn’t convince, though he’s trying his little heart out. As the resident bitchy head nurse, Deirdre Taylor, whilst entertaining, is clearly doing an imitation of cult actress Mary Woronov, which begs the question of why they didn’t just hire Woronov instead. Meanwhile, Henriksen and Lyonne are thoroughly wasted in sorely underdeveloped roles. In fact, Lyonne seems to lack so much direction and purpose here I was wondering (given her recent real-life troubles) if the director just found her wandering around the set one day, perhaps thinking she was in a real hospital, and Butler just decided to shoot some footage of her. Look, this isn’t a bad film, like I said, it is aesthetically a very pleasing film, and a few of the performances aren’t bad. It’s just that it’s been done before, and better.