DVD review: The Hospital (2013)

First I´d like to thank Jim O'Rear for sending me a DVD of The Hospital.
Old St. Leopold's Hospital has many urban legends surrounding it, but the residents of Bridgeport all agree on one thing: tortured souls roam its abandoned halls. The mystery proves too much for a pretty young student who decides to investigate for her senior class project. Unfortunately, she does not find ghosts. She, instead, finds Stanley (Daniel Emery Taylor)... serial rapist, murderer, and psychopath. As the young girl becomes Stanley's new pet, a team of young investigators descend on the hospital to "hunt some ghosts." Stanley sees nothing but fun and games in his future. But, what Stanley does not know is that the hospital truly is haunted and the restless spirits there are not happy with what he has been doing. The Hospital is written by Jim O'Rear and Daniel Emery Taylor. It is directed by Tommy Golden and Daniel Emery Taylor. The acting is decent, the camerawork and editing is good. The soundtrack is pretty good even though I didn´t like the title song (hey I´m old fashioned, hip hop music and horror don´t work for me). The pacing is good. The concept is cool and in some parts it is very familiar but that is not a problem for me. The use of a defunct hospital is a cool setting. There´s a few twists which is a nice touch. There are a couple of gory kills but some kills also take place off screen or are more or less bloodless. The effects are a mix of computer rendered and practical fx. Let´s just say that this could have been very gory and very nasty if the film makers would have chosen that path (I guess they didn´t due to the limited budget) but make no misstake about it, this is pretty nasty and extreme as there is degradation, torture and multiple scenes of rape (including male rape by a huge dildo) and even necrophilia on screen. There is gratuitous T and A including full frontal nudity and sex.
This review is based upon the Region 0 (region all) DVD release from Deviant Pictures.
Rating: 5½ out of 7. Not bad, a bit uneven but not bad at all. I must admit that it took awhile before I started to enjoy the flick but after the first twist it improved and got better (keep in mind that I didn´t know much about the plot when I started watching). The Hospital is more disturbing than scary due to the multiple scenes of sexualised violence and rape. If you´re a fan of  rape/revenge, tortureporn (hate that name) and supernatural (remember there are ghosts in it also) genres you might wanna check out The Hospital. 


/JL