BEFORE: Apologies for the abrupt change in tone, but it's a new month and Shock-tober is here again, so bring on the spooky movies, and also the semi-spooky comic-book movies because it's also Comic-Con season in New York. So I'll be celebrating that, even though I probably won't be able to attend the event this year. Well, I had a good run, nearly 20 years of going to NYCC, and I only paid for a badge ONCE, every other time I was part of an exhibitor team and got in for free to sell stuff. But, I'm not a young man any more and I could have worked there doing crowd control, but that's tough on the legs and I have to start taking better care of mine. I could use the money, but I've got two other gigs right now that are booking me, so let's look at the positives.
Christopher McDonald carries over from "Happy Gilmore 2", and here are the actor links that should get me through the spookiest month: Jessica Alba, Rade Serbedzija, Selma Blair, Nicolas Cage, Marnie McPhail, Alison Pill, Jorge Garcia, Roderick Hill, Russell Crowe, Ralph Ineson, Nicholas Hoult, Christopher Winchester, Gralen Bryant Banks, Saul Williams, Alia Shawkat, Jonny Mars, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner and Trevor Newlin. That's only 19 people, but there will be 25 films this year, so some actors are doing triple duty, that's how I roll. We'll have vampires and ghosts and demons and a few things I'm not all that sure about, but that's never stopped me before. And I'll be taking a week off for a trip, but that's all been factored in to the schedule, the important thing is to keep eyes on the prize and not deviate from the plan, because the whole thing's got to stay on schedule for Christmas and maybe one film after. Yeah, I could have added one more Christopher McDonald film and then I wouldn't have to worry about falling short, but I'm going to delay fixing that problem, until the very end of the year if I have to.
THE PLOT: A wealthy young man undergoing heart transplant surgery discovers that the surgical team intend to murder him.
AFTER: This film tells us at the start that each year 21 million people are put under anesthesia (this was in 2007, not sure if the stats have changed), but also that 1 out of every 700 people remain awake during surgery. Well, if this is true then maybe somebody should look into that, either those people are freaks or this whole process of sedating people has some bugs in it. Look, I know there have been vast improvements in medicine over the years, like they used to use ether and that wasn't perfect, and before that they just, umm, I don't know, they gave you something to bite on while they amputated your leg or something, and I guess if you were lucky you passed out and didn't have to experience all that pain. However, I'm also open to the possibility that the filmmakers just made up these statistics to tell a story, because that's what filmmakers tend to do, who has time to do research?
The condition is called anesthesia awareness, and Wiki says that the incidence rate is really a bit lower, more like one out of every 14,000 people. Still, that seems like we should be looking for ways to prevent that. I've been under anesthesia a couple times, twice for endoscopies and once for a colonoscopy. But I feel very fortunate that I've never been hospitalized for anything, every procedure I've ever had done was on an out-patient visit. So I'm trying to keep that streak as long as I can, inevitably I think one day I'll probably end up staying over in a hospital for some reason. The main character here is in need of a heart transplant, and he's a young billionaire who can afford the best medical treatment, but for some reason he wants the procedure done by his friend, who is a surgeon with several malpractice suits against him, no, nothing suspicious about that at all.
At the same time, he's secretly dating his mother's personal assistant, and it's been a year and he has not yet informed his very controlling mother about the relationship. Again, this all seems to be on the up-and-up, there's nothing weird at all about not telling your mother that you're engaged, look, Clay's just nervous about getting married and nervous about not having his mother's approval, this is all perfectly normal except that it's all very weird. Rich people, am I right? But finally he tells his mother about his engagement, and she doesn't take it well - who could have seen THAT one coming? But this bolsters Clay to take action, he suddenly wants to spite his mother and marry Sam on the spot, he's rich, he can make things happen, he can pay for a minister in the middle of the night and arrange for his best/only friend the surgeon to be there.
Before the ink can even dry on the marriage license, Clay gets a call from his transplant doctor that there's a heart available for him. Nope, nothing suspicious about that timing at all, it's just a coincidence and another piece of good news, those things tend to come in threes, right? So, umm, what's the third one? Surprise, there's no more good news because the regular anesthesiologist got called away on an emergency, so "Dr. Larry" steps in, and I don't know what Larry did wrong, but Clay is somehow awake during the operation when the doctors cut him open to remove his heart. And he can hear what the doctors are saying, they're going to inject the new heart with a drug that will make the transplant fail, therefore killing him, and then some new wife is going to collect on a large insurance policy!
This is all a pretty complex scheme, and clearly it took a lot of planning, and it's really terrifying that Clay can figure out their plan while unconscious, but he can't do anything about it. Instead he's trapped in his dream-world, where he's bombarded with images from his past, like how his father died on Christmas after falling down stairs, also how he first got together with Samantha and manage to ignore all the warning signs about her, plus he also sees himself in a dream version of the hospital, where he can travel around and listen to what people are saying and determine who exactly is in on the scheme. He can also see himself getting operated on, which is kind of cool, but it also calls into question whether Clay is hearing and seeing exactly what's taking place, or if it's all part of his imagination.
Dr. Larry turns out to be on the side of the angels, and he manages to figure out what's going on - and so does Clay's controlling mother. Mom calls in her original choice of transplant doctor, who could complete the surgery, if only he could find another available heart to put in Clay's body. Well, you know, they could just keep him alive without one, with a machine pumping his blood around, just like former VP Dick Cheney. Little known fact, he's survived for years without a real heart, and some might suggest that he never really had one in the first place. Who can be sure? No spoilers here about how this all gets resolved, but there's a fast response from SVU, that's the Surgical Victims Unit. I think maybe Dr. Larry was an undercover cop?
OK, so we're starting small for this year's horror chain, we're going to build up to much scarier stuff in the weeks ahead - this is more like a film about fear, like thanatophobia (fear of dying) or nosocomephobia (fear of hospitals) or tomophobia (fear of invasive medical procedures) or iatrophobia (fear of doctors). While we're at it, Clay initially suffered from gamophobia (fear of commitment) and fear of his mother's disapproval, when he really should have been aware of pistanthrophobia (fear of betrayal or being deceived). The better news is that there was a Halloween party seen early in the film, so that places the story in October and proves that I'm right on track, as always.
Directed by Joby Harold (producer of "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum")
Also starring Hayden Christensen (last seen in "First Kill"), Jessica Alba (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Terrence Howard (last seen in "Angel Eyes"), Lena Olin (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Sam Robards (last seen in "The Art of Getting By"), Arliss Howard (last seen in "The Killer"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "LOL"), Georgina Chapman (last seen in "Factory Girl"), David Harbour (last seen in "Thunderbolts"), Steven Hinkle (last seen in "Syriana"), Denis O'Hare (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Charlie Hewson (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Court Young, Joseph Costa, Poorna Jagannathan (last seen in "Mile 22"), Lee Wong (last seen in "A Perfect Murder"), Kae Shimizu, Steven Rowe, Jeffrey Fierson, John C. Havens (last seen in "Life or Something Like It"), Richard Thomsen, Joshua Rollins (last seen in "Infinite Storm"), Brenda Schad (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Sam Pitman.
RATING: 5 out of 10 surgical gloves
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