The Hospital (2013)

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Yes folks, this is a low budget independent horror. There are no anorexic Hollywood actors, no fancy CGI effects. And it is extreme horror, this isn't PG-13 stuff for teens.Some girls drive around when their car breaks down. Someone else arrives. Next thing we know, they are tortured and raped. And that's just the intro. A college girl travels to a town to investigate the rumors surrounding the local abandoned hospital. Everyone in town encourages her to leave and forget about it. She doesn't. You can guess what happens to her. Except that she isn't killed but kept alive by the bad guy.5 girls take a paranormal investigation tour sponsored by some sleazy paranormal investigator. He hands the girls over to 2 guys who'll do the tour. The tour will be several days at the hospital, where the groundskeeper is...the bad guy from the intros.Turns out the 2 guys aren't just interested in hooking up with the girls but they have much more sinister plans for them. And it gets very nasty, let's put it that way. Eventually cops get involved as well as the father of the college girl and her sister. But there are some more twists to the story.As a low budget movie, you should know to expect uneven acting, poor lighting, problems with sound, normal looking people, etc. But what I didn't expect was how extreme and graphic this movie would be. There lots of violence, gore, nudity, blood, and other bodily fluids. But they actually bothered to come up with a good story and script. Acting isn't all around terrible, several actors here do a good job. I'm going to give The Hospital high marks for the sheer guts to make a movie like this and for the cast for being committed to doing some pretty nasty stuff. You can't really review and rate a movie like this by Hollywood standards. Overall, a courageous attempt and if you know what you're getting yourself into, it's even enjoyable.

HERE YOU HAVE SOME guys that have a passion to make films.I myself have been involved in filmmaking I couldn't tell whether it was 16mm or a grade of look a like video.In any event they found the resources to get actors,a location,lighting,editing,original basic soundtrack,subject matter and a script.All these elements were pulled together in hopes of entertaining the public.At the end of my intro i wrote {I JUST HOPE} that the next time i see one of their films IT COMES FROM A BETTER SCRIPT.The story is everything most viewers are willing to sit thru low end technique if the story is intriguing.This very same story could have been told in a more interesting way.One idea would be to raise the social status of the women so when they were kidnapped and tortured the viewer could have felt more of a loss.the audience needs to think --HEY THAT COULD HAVE BEEN MY SISTER OR MY GIRL FRIEND.But no one wants to claim throw away low class women.Acting is pretending that you are someone you are not so make your actors act.There also could have been a villain and a hero and someone that was worth saving even if one of the VICTIMS SAVED THEMSELVES.Everything was present BUT THE STORY.

About ten minutes into "The Hospital", I realized that this was not going to be the film I was expecting. Billed as a haunted house (or abandoned hospital, to be exact) / psycho-slasher hybrid, I was fully prepared to take in a little indie picture akin to the recent "The Haunting of Whaley House" with a dash of slice 'n dice slasher sauce thrown in to satisfy the gorehounds. What I got was pure B-grade exploitation.While a supernatural element is present, "The Hospital" has more in common with the grindhouse shocksploitation of the '70s ("I Spit on Your Grave", "Last House on the Left", etc.) than it does any haunted house film. All the staples of the genre are here- shocking deaths, rape, dismemberment, breasts (lots and lots of breasts, all shapes and sizes), and vile depictions of unimaginable acts intended to shock and disgust. Viewed in this context, I found "The Hospital" to be quite an enjoyable slice of sleaze.In addition to aforementioned genre staples, the film also does feature some of the unfortunate (or charming, depending on your point of view) elements commonly associated with the breed- some sub-par acting, poor lighting and sound design, and shoddy special effects (specifically the ineffective CGI. I understand this was most likely done for budgetary reasons, but in this type of film, I would personally take the cheapest, most amateur practical effects over mediocre CGI any day.). However, none of these issues severely hindered my enjoyment of "The Hospital". This film is not "Citizen Kane", nor does it have any intention to be.As a fan of horror of all sub-genres, I would recommend "The Hospital" to those with a strong stomach. It's most certainly not a film for everybody, but those with an affinity for exploitation and ultra low-budget indies should find plenty to appreciate here.

AIN'T IT COOL NEWS REVIEWTHE HOSPITAL is a sick and twisted ordeal which, like THE G-STRING HORROR, centers around a paranormal investigation show. This time around, a group of guys lure a handful of women into a supposedly haunted hospital telling them that they will be a part of a paranormal investigation show which will be seen by millions of viewers. In actuality, this is a trap and GHOST HUNTERS soon morphs into an especially tasteless installment of HOSTEL pretty hastily.To give this film credit, it does have some unexpected turns from start to finish and is able to mislead pretty well throughout, making this a truly unpredictable ride.On the other hand, this is an especially diabolical film with no woman in its large cast getting out without being stripped, raped, and killed—and sometimes not in that order. There are scenes of torture, abuse, rape, and murder a-plenty here, and though there is attention to story, it is clear the focus of the film is to show different girls in peril over and over and over again.Had the torture inflicted in this film not been such the object of so many minutes in the film's run time, I'd believe the filmmakers may have been trying to make a statement here about violence by going so far over the top. But sadly, I felt the film may be a little too much fascinated with the torture to know when enough is enough. It was very tough to sit through this film and it definitely caused a lot of unease, which a good horror movie should do, I guess.But I like a point to my violence, and THE HOSPITAL doesn't seem to have a lot of it besides racking up a kill count with some of the most depraved kills enacted upon anyone in cinematic history. If you have an iron stomach, you might be able to withstand this perverse little indie, but though there is some kind of retribution to the rapist killers in the end, it is definitely not what the camera seems to linger on.