Wednesday, April 22, 2020

I Watched INMATE ZERO So You Don't Have To

Patients of a Saint Movie Poster
***Please note this will be the beginning of a series of reviews where I have already subjected myself to a fairly bad movie and to purge, I tell you all about it. That said, the entire piece is one big spoiler. You were warned!**

So I watched this movie called "Patients of a Saint". Very clever play on words as it's supposed to have something to do with experiments that go wrong..get it..Patients...only it takes place in a prison, making the title a moot point. Also when I was given the screener it was called Inmate Zero..so..yea. So, I jump in thinking it might be at least a sub-par zombie movie. The makeup was pretty damn good, the entire film is shot very high quality, the acting was pretty terrible and the writing was abysmal. The lead character is named "Stone", a super lanky woman with a shaved head that we are supposed to buy as ex special forces, a point they drive home several times as they mention it...several times..and then we see her kick some redneck's ass. It seems her special forces skills are abandoned for the rest of the movie as she spends most of it crying and not much else.


At any rate..experiments on prisoners..one man who was experimented on gets put in the women's wing where he dies, comes back, dies again and then presumably eats all of the other women in the sick ward, run by a sandwich hoovering woman who won't give out pain meds because she sells them on the black market, a fact she announces in less that 2 minutes when we meet her. Muahaha. She's the bad guy right? WRONG. She sucks. The ward goes all bleedy-black eyed, veiny and twitchy, with women randomly dropping to all fours to bound toward a potential victim. Of course Stone escapes, as a kindly corrections officer WHEELS HER OUT OF THE ROOM (in her entire bed). You can argue that she's in the ward due to a cut ankle (from the redneck fight) and she can't walk, but as soon as they clear the room, she hops out of bed and the ankle is miraculously cured for the rest of the film.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE REST OF THE FILM, YOU ASK? I'm glad you did. The guards get overrun and the remaining women prisoners are lead to safety by "The Butcher", a kindly black woman with a Jamaican accent who cares for just about everyone. Maybe she just likes beef. I dunno. Anywayyys..as soon as they get her into a kitchen area, she arms herself with a cleaver...because butcher. OK then.

Now, as our survivors continually flee the growing leaky-twitchy horde, which sort of equates to them moving from room to room after someone gets chewed on, we meet a prisoner who is kicking drugs and is in very bad shape. The Butcher pets her head. We meet another prisoner who doesn't like being told what to do. And another one who wants to make a deal with one of the few remaining officers to ditch the rest and leave. Mind you, we are about 45 minutes into the movie as we get all this character development in place of, ya know, actual horror. Each dramatic scene is full of teary eyed close ups and daytime telenovela music. Agony.

Prisoners escape from room to room, make a rescue attempt at the front gate where there are civilians pounding on the door...to get in? To get out? NO idea. But the Butcher's daughter is out there and so is the warden's sister, so they grab weapons and go to work. This ENTIRE FIGHT is heard as gunshots and growling by the people inside. THE WHOLE DAMN FIGHT IS OFF CAMERA. Our heroes return with one little blonde girl who is neither the daughter or the sister. Worst. rescue. ever.

It was hard to watch the rest of this movie as my eyes were rolling back into my head so hard I could see my own brain. There's some nonsense about the generator going out but they can get unlimited energy from the electric chair!! They go to do that but the Butcher decides to kill a drippy officer by throwing him into the chair and Stone remarks "WELL THERE GOES THAT ELECTRICITY!" wOMP wOMP. Then there's a bit where the warden's sister makes it into the warden's office..by herself..dead..and they capture her because the warden says she can call a helicopter to evac them all IF they take her drippy sister with them. The sister looks like Carol from The Walking Dead when she still had short hair. Dead drippy Carol almost seems to make sarcastic faces at the actors when they say dumb things...which happens a lot, if you didn't guess that already.

Inmate Zero PosterSo the remaining survivors get to a different room that looks like the last 20 rooms and the warden
calls for the helicopter and tells them TO BLOW UP THE WHOLE ISLAND!!! DUN DUN DUUUUN. After she gives the command, dead drippy Carol gives her best side eye to the warden and then bites her face off. Best scene ever.

I don't know what the FRIK was happening in the next scenes...there was a bit where the junky volunteers to run through the drippy horde to do...something...the little blonde lady volunteers to climb through a vent to see where the rest of the drippys are and eventually everyone dies in the stupidest ways possible.

Our movie ends with Stone climbing a staircase and stumbling out onto a beach where she hallucinates her mother and imagines she is with her. The helicopter that is supposed to blow stuff up (did they call them and ask them nicely not to? I have no idea. I may have rubbed my eyes for the 2 minutes that happened) lands and they handcuff a crying Stone and dump her in the helicopter. As they fly away we get an extreme closeup of her crying and imagining her mom until her face melts, Stone screams and we see black veins start creeping across her face. Very cool effect and..you know what..the Carol scene was hot garbage. THIS is the best scene of the movie.

and credits.

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