Pathology

PATHOLOGY (2008) - June 3, 2009
A stupid movie about a young doctor who goes to a new hospital and suddenly finds himself a participant in a group who take turns killing people, giving the other doctors a chance to try to figure out how they did it. This group is led by Dr. Gallo (get it? Gallo? Gallows? Get it??). Setting aside the implausibility of this group murdering dozens of people and never even raising the suspicions of the police (because in a movie this silly, you're not really supposed to think about stuff like that), or the fact that this group of coworkers all happen to be sociopaths, or the fact that the protagonist essentially goes from normal guy to crack-smoking murderer overnight... even setting all that aside, this was still not a particularly good movie. It was written by Mark Nevaldine and Brian Taylor, the duo who wrote and directed the Crank films, which were both awesomely absurd. This was just absurd. It's kind of disheartening, because I had sort of assumed that Neveldine and Taylor were talented, but this was so bad on so many levels it really does make me wonder if they aren't just one-hit wonders, good in the over-the-top context of a Crank film, but otherwise inept. And this was definitely inept, from the clunky dialogue to how ridiculously, gleefully evil everyone in the little group were (all they were missing were mustaches to twirl). Marc Schölermann's direction was fine, and Milo Ventimiglia did the best he could with the material, but aside from a few decent scenes this was really not good at all. *1/2