The Facility (2012)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Boring

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

My first review here. It was shown on "Horror" last night, first time on UK TV. Cast? Generic cardboard cut outs (Asian guy, studious, Welsh guy serious/flirty, Old guy who has been in medical experiments before, a journalist, an Irish woman who is connected to a drugs company, giggly 19 year old dyed blonde girl, preening male model type). Some compare it to 28 days. Wrong. The script on this film was dire. The premise borderline asinine (why not just walk two miles to the nearest road?) I am only here as I dozed off and missed the ending. The Old guy was zonked out, the Welsh guy nervously surveying the spy cameras - the Irish woman smoking and the journalist worrying. What happened next?

To be perfectly honest, after just viewing Ian Clark's (director/writer) The Facility, I jumped onto IMDb to find that the rating for it was exactly as I predicted. At the time of writing the film sits at just under 5/10, perhaps not a true marker since it's largely under seen and very few people have bothered to review it, but not a surprising score thus far since familiarity of formula breeds contempt...Plot basically finds a group of human guinea pigs enrolling for a two week trial at a remote research centre. They are to be injected with a new drug called Pro-9, and after their two week stay they will pocket a cool £2000 each. The group consists of the needy, the inquisitive, the bold and the stupid, and sure enough once night falls and the lock down commences, some of the participants get a reaction to the drug...It follows the standard trajectory for such a set-up. Characters are introduced, we get to know them for half hour, you quickly learn who the A-Hole is, and then it's drug reaction time and we are thrust into murder death kill and locked in siege panic. Tis a time for heroes, maybe even some interesting revelations? Who will survive? If anyone? Maybe there's a twist in the tale as well?For his debut feature film Ian Clark has played safe and utilised the low budget wisely. The pic shows him to have great promise in the horror genre, his keen sense of claustrophobic atmosphere is evident and carries the story well, and he knows how to construct a horror scene. He also gets more than solid performances from his lively cast, where Alex Reid (The Descent/Wilderness) is a reassuring presence.It isn't over bloody, or even terrifying and full of boo jump shocks, but it tickles away at the nerve that doesn't like to be unhinged, and it has a good ending to boot! If you are searching for something new in the sub-genre of zombie/infected siege movies you will be disappointed, but this is actually better than some of those bigger budgeted sub-genre movies. While it marks Clark out as someone British Horror fans might like to keep an eye on. 6.5/10

There was a very solid acting group here. Which I think is what draws you in from the beginning. But actors can only work with what they are given. Here it isn't much. You should recognize a familiar face in one of the actors as he just played a very decent agoraphobic father bent on saving his daughter. But there are too many moments in this film that leave you scratching your head and wondering "What? Why did this just happen?" Or worse, "Why didn't this just happen?" Those to questions haunt you through the film until it becomes a race to see if you can stand watching until the end. Honestly it was a good production team coupled with a great acting team wasted on a story that just wasn't there. I guess if you are one of those people that are literally obsessed with medical horror maybe. But even that is a stretch. Avoid this film but check out what else the cast has done. Because I can tell you it is better than this film.

The Facility is about a group of people that are part of a drug trial. Unforeseen side effects make the first and only night of a 14 days trial mayhem.Yeah, the drug induced guinea pig crazy people thing has been done. Yeah, there's nothing that makes this movie stand out from anything. But..., the simple fact that it was so..., simple, made it believable. I've never been a part of one of those trials but I have been on drugs that cause those kind of psychotically, aggressive, homicidal, suicidal feelings. So I can kind of understand how something like that could happen. This didn't happen. This was just a directors attempt to cause spite for big business pharmaceuticals. Which he failed. Overall, the acting was decent, it was actually a decent little film. It was just too short. This movie had some good things going on. Some good suspense building/built up, then it just ends by the director saying, "No one at Prosyntrex was prosecuted." That was it. I really wanted to like it better, but the way it ended just made it seem like the director just ran out of ideas and said f*** it.