Double Blind review.
A slick locked door thriller that wisely turns inward for its horror.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Double Blind
Directed by Ian Hunt-Duffy
Written by Darach McGarrigle
Starring Millie Brady, Pollyanna McIntosh, Akshay Kumar, Diarmuid Noyes, Brenock O’Connor, Aby Fitz and Shonagh Marie
Double Blind Review
An experimental drug has deadly, and scary, consequences in Double Blind. Consider it a bit of a pharmaceutically triggered Nightmare on Elm Street…by way of David Lynch. Double Blind delivers some terrific horror moments. Better still, it keeps a strong momentum going throughout…saving its greatest tricks when it slows the pace.
It’s a better trick than it reads on paper. The fast-paced nature of the storytelling matches the desperate situation of its characters. If they begin to slow down…terrible things happen. The movie mirrors this perfectly by upping the scare factor as its pace slows. There’s a quality to the craft here that allows you to feel exactly what the experiment’s test subjects feel. Desperation followed by confusion and horror.
Let’s back up. Double Blind is a simple story of a drug trial gone horribly wrong. Blackwood Pharmaceuticals gathers seven subjects to test an experimental drug. The drug is meant to keep you awake. The good news is that it works. The bad news is it has one notable side effect. If you fall asleep…you die. When the facility goes into lockdown…the group must find a way out…and stay awake.
Claire (Millie Brady) is our lead. She shows up to the trial already sleep deprived. Monetary needs have led her to the facility. An air of expendability makes her an easy choice. Of course, she doesn’t know the latter part when she signs up. Her six fellow test subjects are equally expendable in the eyes of Blackwood. Dr. Burke (Pollyanna McIntosh) is leading the experiment. She quickly recognizes there is trouble…but offers an increase in payment for seeing the trial through.
Claire isn’t interested in making friends with the group. A young girl named Alison (Abby Fitz) gets on the wrong side of Claire’s exhaustion simply for being too nice. Any chance this story is going to be about Claire growing as a person comes to a bloody end when Alison abruptly dies…blood oozing from every orifice in her head. Alison fell asleep. That’s all it takes.
So…yeah…it’s a bit of A Nightmare on Elm Street. There is no charismatic child murdering burn victim to torment them when they fall asleep…but there is a very fun Lynchian vibe to it. Double Blind has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve when the remaining subjects start to doze off. Hallucinations, hearing voices, talking to the dead…all bets are off when you hit the point of pure exhaustion. There are a few extremely clever moments involved that lead to unexpected, and fun, scenes.
The group’s problems only grow when the facility goes into 24-hour lock down. There is no escape according to Amir (Akshay Kumar), a trial participant that seems to know a lot more than he should. This introduces the two active parts of Double Blind’s story. Claire steps up to take charge…attempting to find any way out of the facility and working with Amir on a chemical solution to their deadly side effect. Meanwhile, the rest of the group begins to suspect that Amir isn’t on their side.
Double Blind is a great mix of tense ticking clock action…and beautiful, deadly dreamlike sequences when a character begins to wind down. The two dynamics complement each other wonderfully. When the group is trying to escape or turning on each other…the movie carries a fast, fun energy. When things start to slow…things get creepy. And deadly.
This is a well-made movie with solid performances throughout. It has enough surprises to keep you engaged while making you fear the moments that stop attempting to engage you. Double Blind makes you feel like you are a part of the experiment by offering up tense situations and seemingly disconnected sequences that deliver surprising moments. Take the pill.
Scare Value
Double Blind works best when we don’t know what’s happening. That element takes over whenever one of the test subjects begins to fall asleep. Freddy Krueger may not be on the other side…but the result is the same. The group’s desperation to escape captivity adds urgency to the story. When the story slows down, however, Double Blind really hits hard.
3.5/5
Double Blind Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from VUDU and Amazon
