Saturday 28 May 2016

Review and Apology - Hell Reviews - The Facility - Note: There will be spoilers.


Synopsis: Horror in which a clinical trial at a remote facility goes terribly wrong. Among those who sign up to test ProSyntrex's latest drug Pro9 are Adam (Aneurin Barnard), Joni (Alex Reid), Carmen (Skye Lourie) and Jed (Oliver Coleman). The trial is highly secret, with no-one, including the staff who administer injections, aware of who is receiving the drug and who is in the placebo group. Shortly after the trial begins it becomes clear that something has gone wrong. There are unexplained disappearances, bizarre silhouettes and screaming from behind locked doors. Locked inside the facility, unaware of the true nature of events, the surviving patients and staff must band together to try and find a way out of the nightmare.

Alright, it's a wonderful Friday night and I have literally just finished watching this film and all I can think is:
 
The facility was this weeks premiere on the Horror channel.
It's a film I've noticed quite often, I remember picking up the DVD case whilst browsing various shops over the years and thinking; Huh, I need to watch that, it looks good.
Finally, three years later I get to see it and...hooo boy was I wrong!


It started out promising enough then completely lost it part way through, I got so bored that I stopped paying attention for about twenty minutes without realising and when I zoned back in I still feel like I hadn't missed anything.
Except what happened to Arif, who I kept mistakenly believing was called Aaron throughout the whole film.
Seriously, where'd he go?
I know he got raged after the drugs took affect, so I can only presume he died but....yeah...I dunno.

The story had so much potential then ended up being lacklustre, and I feel like I say that far too often on here, but it's sad how often that turns out to be true.
In my opinion at least.
Now I am by no means a cinephile, I am but a mere casual viewer. However I'm not one of those stupid ones that needs everything explained to me, but there are certain titbits of information I wouldn't have minded to have for this particular film.
There are tons of films out there that create this mystery serum, some are explained (usually the more high budgeted things I've found) and some to be used simply as a means to an end, The Facility is unfortunately the latter.
To push this even further, however, it seems that this particular film doesn't even explain 'why' to anything it throws at you.

Why is ProSyntrex testing this on humans?
We don't know.

Did they test it on animals first?
We don't know.

Why does it make every participant go into the same kind of rage rather than have multiple results on varying people?
We don't know.

Why would you make it so the staff members themselves don't know who has the placebo and who is actually injected, thus putting themselves and the test subjects in danger?
We.don't.know.

Nothing is explained as if it's supposed to make us more on edge when everyone starts going nuts and killing each other.
Let's not forget the typical; Oh no! We were told not to tell anyone about this and have no contact with the outside world, aside from this one connected phone line throughout the facility, but that's been cut and we only have these walkie talkies that won't connect to anyone outside.
Which always happens as soon as it goes insane in the membrane.
I can suspend my disbelief, but there comes a limit and sometimes it takes merely one throw away sentence to answer all the questions I have left over after watching.

The characters range from passable to irritating.
I figured the whole point of having test subjects is getting a variety of people with varying backgrounds and personalities, this should help with better results on how the serum takes hold of each person.
Well they kind of got the varying backgrounds down, from the small hints you were given at the very beginning, but all of them were total asshats.
Although I kind of like Arif....come back you germaphoby dude, I miss you.
And you Howard, I think you were a caretaker or security guard or something, either way, you were nice and didn't get enough screen time.
There was a nineteen year old there who acted like a bloody eight year old.
A typical jock type who was blatantly going to be the first to go mad, and not just because he was injected first. It was because he was a total asshole and those characters very rarely get left until last, especially in movies like this when there's a whole selection of people to get rid of.
Pick off the asshole first, it's a guaranteed winner.
I was dealing well with Toby, who seemed to be an ex-druggie and over all cool 'older guy' of the group...but once again we didn't get official confirmation, from what I remember. Of course because he started off cool he simply HAD to turn into a twat in the end.
The other characters, aside from our main guy Adam, proved to be completely pointless.
Heck even the doctor and the nurse were ultimately useless.
I believe there was a reporter women who signed up with the purpose to do an article on this test, my main issue here is that it was supposed to be a super, ultra, mega secret test so how did she get wind that it was going on?
In fact...how did ANY of them?

Another thing, were these characters supposed to have pre-existing issues?
I mean Arif was obviously a germaphobe.
Toby had been there and seen it all.
Nineteen year old clearly had stunted mental growth, whether that was intentional or not I can't say.
Adam seemed to have some kind of social disorder, perhaps? He was your typical, hang back all quietly like until things needed to be put in order.
I'm not sure, I don't remember getting clarification either.

Wow...not even an hour has passed since I watched it and I'm already lacking on information, that says a lot.

So this is where the official spoiler talk starts, so I guess if you don't wish for spoilers than scroll past this section and head straight past it!
Anyway! It turns out that, DUNDUNDUN!!!!
Adam was the placebo recipient all along.
Dat plot twist man!
Also there's an epilogue of forced caption reading for you to read so you can get the gist of how this whole test ended.
You know the one thing that annoyed me beyond belief?
No, it wasn't that there were all of two survivors apparently.
I'm presuming that one was Adam, the other one?
I...am not entirely sure, four very short clips were shown at the end of different characters all looking alive and well, for some anyway.
No, it also wasn't that ProSyntex had no repercussions for sending these people into a living hell and causing deaths which these people's families will have to mourn.
It's the fact that it said the affects wore off after seventeen hours!
I HATE when films do that!
I find it to be such a cop-out.
People's lives have been ruined because this company seemingly hadn't done their job properly and tested the serum accordingly before moving to the next stage.
It seemed like no one, not even the doctor giving the damn injections, knew any of the possible results and everyone had a 'wait and see attitude. If that was me I'd want all the information they could possibly give me before accepting anything they wanted to stick in my arm.
It seems logic is not welcome in this place.

In conclusion, it's awful and I would recommend you give it a miss.
Is there a chance I'm just being stupid and didn't pick up on the small hints given in places?
Of course, as I said I found myself drifting away, but had the film been more gripping then it wouldn't have been an issue.

Now, I will take this moment to apologise for slacking so much this month.
It's been a surprisingly hectic month, but it's started calming down and I can focus on writing my reviews and randomness.
Although I know I don't have any followers, I still feel bad for slacking off and just being a terrible updater.
But it should all be back soon, I'll even post a few more stories.
That's all!
Hell out!

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