Review of Insanitarium (2008) by Red B — 15 Oct 2010

Insanitarium is one of the best examples I can find for the utter worthlessness of horror as a viable genre in the world of film, but bypassing my extreme prejudice towards horror movies which was, indeed, influenced by movies such as Insanitarium, the film pretty much screams utter worthlessness throughout its entire length. The highlight is a cat's head getting torn off by human hand. Sounds fun, eh? Watching this film makes me wonder how people can bitch and moan about the violence in video games and yet continue to support shit like this. Isn't that the loveliest double standard ever?

People are probably going to end up asking what I think horror truly is. Horror is the feeling of dread and despair upon the mind. Brian de Palma perfected this in the film, Carrie, which portrayed the horror of the mind. Psychological horror is what I want to see in film, but often this is never the case. See, of course, in a world where people would much rather see people getting killed far worse than the poor soul in 2 Guys 1 Hammer, this isn't the case and we're given shit like Insanitarium. The plot? What is the plot really? It's just some dipshit voluntarily leaving himself a captive of a manical doctor who tries too hard to be Doctor Moreau. It's like seeing Lady Bjorkdonna, I mean Gaga, trying to convince people she's actually a musician of credible worth. But, then again, that's what Hollywood horror does on a daily basis.

If you want to see why horror is as dead as grunge rock, then see this film. If you want "horror" films that are actually meaningful, see films such as Carrie and the works of Hitchcock (proto-horror films, if you will, these are), Vincent Price, and so forth. These that I just mentioned are basically the only "horror" films ever to have existed. I could recommend the slasher films, but, really, slasher films only twist the "horror of the mind" into cheap gut-a-girl porn. This poor sod of a genre's even more irrelevant to serious moviegoers than MTV and rap are to music.