21 Days of Spooky: The Facility (Ian Clark, 2012)

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21 Days of Spooky is not about pop culture that sets out to fright you with brain-eating, viscerae-hanging, slash-killing scenes, but with thoughts that linger and persist on your life long after you've watched them. Or are just downright creepy. Tonight's spooky: Ian Clark's The Facility. Some spoilers ahead.

What's it about?: A group of people participating on a drug trial discover that the drug they've been given has some dangerous side effects... and they are trapped in the medical facility with nowhere to run or no one to call for help.

In this feature we've previously dealt with pop culture that deals with enclosed spaces such as Swiss Alps retreats, or psychological enclosure such as big houses in the countryside in where your relatives try to kill you, but so far nothing in this feature dealt with isolation itself. Isolation both physical and psychological, the kind that makes you go crazy even when there's nothing to go crazy about, or the kind that screws with you so hard that it actually ramps up whatever pre-existing ailment/grudge/wrath you may have. If we add to that a drug that kinda turns you into a rabid thing, well, it's full-on disaster.

And happens to be exactly what happens to the poor souls that lead The Facility. Seven people with different backgrounds, personalities, and reasons to be there, in the end are exposed equally to the same danger, threats, and the uncertainty of not knowing when the person next to you will suddenly start getting a bit more angry than usual and decide to, I dunno, eat your face or whatever. As big as a place might be, there's a high chance you still won't be able to escape from the athletic jock-like douchelord your phys-ed-less ass antagonized from the get go.

Now, this isn't your typical 28 Days Later-level movie with blood, gore, and frantic shit everywhere, most likely because it's a very indie film and there was possibly very little VFX budget. But that's good, actually! The lack of gnarly stuff allows the feature to actually focus on the minds of those afflicted by the drug (as two of the seven were given a placebo) and how they must control themselves to avoid going full batshit before hopefully getting some help. Those who do go batshit are actually cared for by those remaining because, as you may not remember, we're talking about fellow innocent humans here.

The humanity of it all is one of the scariest concepts the film floats around. Even though the main characters barely know each other, they know they are turning into monsters because of that drug and not due to their own nature, and so the group, when two of them react quicker and go full Romero, don't set out to hunt and murder their asses even when they're majority, the remaining five prefer to hide in order not to be killed and wait for some sort of medical reinforcement to arrive as to help everyone and not only themselves. People do get killed, though, as it's a horror movie and the horror god demands blood.

You may imagine that it's the non-affected humans who, in the end, fail to help, as the seven testers get locked the fuck down in the building without any sort of contact with the outside world. Yes, no one could see a dangerous side-effect coming, and trapping people in a building is a lawsuit waiting to happen, but this is film convention we're discussing and the plot would cease to exist the second a character rang the emergency hotline and/or got the heck outta dodge. In the end, humanity abandoning the group is what isolates them and leaves them to their darkest selves, ready to be unleashed at any time.

How do you know how you are when you're unhinged? You could be the type that, under heavy influence, only ends up sending a dick pic to your boss, or the kind that murders a stranger and drops said stranger on the river. No one can trust themselves, and much less when under the influence of the unknown. And that's why we trust others, like designated drivers or spiritual guides. But what happens when those you trust are also on the verge of destruction? Doubt, helplesness, and ultimately chaos.

In the course of a night, the characters go from willing guinea pigs to confused people desperately trying not to succumb to the monster inside them, protecting themselves from their peers, and not only hoping that help is eventually on their way, but also that these highly unwanted side-effects don't last forever. Because we all fear what we may turn into when we fully lose control.

Tomorrow: Keeping up with the cardassians in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Empok Nor".