Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Sickhouse (2007)

An old plague hospital in London is set to be demolished as authorities are concerned that there might be remnants of sickness inside that could start another epidemic. But archaeologist Anna doesn't care about the public's health, so she breaks into the hospital to finish her work and finds a secret tunnel which holds a small box.

Anna believes that there is evidence in the hospital that plague doctors working at the hospital killed children. The doctors are wearing hoods to protect them from the plague, and look like something out of Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy. Either that or like they have giant chicken heads, either of which can be creepy and stupid at the same time.

You can tell Anna is an archaeologist because she uses a brush on whatever she's working on. But she's not a very good one because she tends to use a pick ax on whatever is in her way and she doesn't use any safety precautions when entering the tunnel. When she opens the box she found, a blue mist comes out, unleashing evil within the hospital.

At the same time in a subplot that will soon come crashing into the storyline, four teenagers steal a car and joyride around the city while taking drugs. The completely annoying group look quite a bit older than the teens they supposedly portray, and it is not obvious until the plot points arise that one is deaf and one is pregnant. When they run over someone in the road and crash the car, they end up hiding in the very hospital that Anna is working in.

When the deaf Clive is attacked by a plague doctor, everyone goes nuts until Anna happens upon them and takes charge. Unfortunately her idea of taking charge is to offer plague boy a glass of water from the plague hospital water supply. Um, if they are demolishing the building, might the water also be unsafe? Then she tells them they need to get as far away from Clive as possible so as to keep from catching the plague.

Her other brilliant ideas are placing old plaguey Clive in a metal cage to keep him safe - How? How can that possibly keep him safe in anyway? - and sending the pregnant girl to check on him. Geez, out of everyone there, wouldn't the pregnant one be the last person who should check on him? How ridiculous!

The movie tops itself by having an ending which causes complete confusion and makes no more sense than anyone's actions throughout the film.

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