Tagline: The cost of medical school may be your life.
What Eli Roth has done with Slovakian Hostels, Jason Todd Ipson has done for Medical School. Unrest opens with a provocatively gore-infused reality of Gross Anatomy. A bit too much for the queasy at heart and learning that they used real cadaver parts throughout the shoot made this film the anti-popcorn event of the season.
Kudos for making me squirm like a kid.
The film is a frenetic journey through the corridors of a medical school where the insanely beautiful Corri English leads an eclectic cast of quasi-newcomers through the catacombs of the macabre. These med students begin working on a mysterious cadaver whose origins come from Brazil and her deposit onto their slab is a bit of a mystery.
No sooner than one can say Boo, things begin to go bump in the night and the students start dying gruesome and horrifying deaths. A race against the clock rages as our heroine must solve the mystery before she ends up the next victim.
This film spooked me as much as Infection did but also avoided the plague that burdened the latter film. Cliché horror films have become a staple of Cinema lately and Unrest seems to understand the inevitable comparisons. Unlike its contemporaries, this film transcends the horror genre to a new level of cerebral gore.
The director was once a General Surgery Resident in Boston training to be a Plastic Surgeon before resigning to attend USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program. Jason Todd Ipson has quite masterfully guided us through the psychological horror of gross anatomy. He’s able to lead the cast through the technical side of understanding death while posing a question that science may or may not ever be able to answer;
What happens to a soul after death?
This is a thought provoking question and Ms. English grapples with the concept quite brilliantly. Unrest is playing only one weekend in select cities for After Dark’s 8 Films to Die For (www.horrorfestonline.com) and in a nutshell a damned good, low budget ghost story. This film has some of the most subconsciously horrific stomach churning sequences that I have seen. To hold this on the same cerebral horror level as Infection is quite an accomplishment. This film may not appease every horror fanatic out there, but in the words of Ed Wood:
“One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.”
I believe that the imagery of Unrest will spook some of you out there after you see it.
Sweet dreams. – Jack Reher
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
