This was a pleasant surprise. Stop me if you've heard this one before: Jennifer Rubin is in a psych ward, she's having dreams of a psychopath who was killed in a fire, and all around her other inmates of the ward are dying mysteriously in what appears to be a rash of suicides. The fact that that exact sentence can also be used to describe A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (released one year prior to this) is exactly what kept me away from this one for so long, I figured it was just a cheap knockoff of the Nightmare movies. I was wrong, and I'm happy to be so.
Rubin is the lone survivor of a Jonestown-like cult led by the ubercreepy yet somehow still compassionate Richard Lynch. Lynch is pretty great, as scary a presence as he is you can still see how people would fall under his sway. Rubin is less great, but she's fine. She's beautiful (and bad, for you Taryn fans) but she's also kind of blank. I would love to have seen someone with a bit more experience at the center here, someone who could really convey the pain, delusion, and ultimate inner strength that the role calls for. The other people in the ward tend to lean toward the cartoonish, but Dean Cameron and E.G. Daily each get a couple of moments that elevate the rest of it. There's also able support by Bruce Abbott and Harris Yulin, and Charles Fleischer makes a great impression in his one scene, as he often does.
While there isn't much in the way of real scares, there's still a lot of disturbing imagery and a few gruesome moments that make it a worthwhile watch for horror fans. The ultimate resolution is actually quite satisfying and reasonably well thought out. Maybe it's just a case of lowered expectations but I really enjoyed this one quite a bit. The central premise (and terrible poster) don't do it any favors in the originality department, but it's not just a cookie-cutter "pretty girl menaced by undead monster" movie, and it's surprisingly solid.
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