Pathology Reviews

I do not dislike this 'movie' because it is 'sick' or 'disturbing' or anything else other viewers brand it with. I dislike it because it is unbelievably written, badly acted, and takes itself so seriously that you are hardly even able to laugh at the pure ridiculousness of the script. "Pathology" features poor performances from Milo Ventimiglia (who displays about four or five facial expressions, tops, but mostly gives us his broody face) and Michael Weston (who wins the honor of being the most unbelievable villain of the year.)

Drinking game time.

. Take a drink whenever a cadaver is shown or discussed.

. Take a drink whenever there is unnecessary sex scene.

. Take a drink whenever someone gives someone else a intense or significant look.

. Drink every time you snort at the pure idiocy of the script.

Ted Grey (disgustingly transparent symbolism in name, check!) is a med student who leaves his girlfriend (Alyssa Milano) to study at a morgue. He is immediately ostracized by the other students. When he makes a 'deep' comment about the innate evil of humanity at a bar, he temporarily wins their respect and they let him in on their secret- they have formed a group where they kill an undesirable member of society and the others try to guess how the murder was committed, using their med school skills.

The very beginning and the very end are... not bad, but the rest of the movie is so terrible you might have to pinch yourself to stay awake. "Pathology" is full of pseudo-profound comments about the darkness that abides within human beings that an emo eighth-grader could have written. The characters are singularly unlikable- it would be hard to find a more reprehensible bunch than featured in this movie, and I'm not letting Ted off the hook.

The moral issues behind he killings of the undesirables, as immoral as some of them are, are never explored in any depth (remember, they 'deserve' it,) while some of the scenes are so silly that you'd have to be high on a gigantic amount of cannibus to find any value in them. Take for instance, the scene where Ted and femme fatale med student Juliette (Lauren Lee Smith) get intimate at the scene of the murder they have committed, having passionate sex across from the dead body. Are we supposed to take this shit seriously??

Which brings me to another subject, the acting. Ventimiglia can't act. Weston can't act as the main baddie, 'Jake.' Smith tries to play a sexy-but-dangerous stone cold killer, but tries so hard that the performance simply comes off as awkward and inexperienced. The movie continually tries to be as immoral and sleazy as possible, but what does it achieve? Nothing.

"Pathology", quite simply, is bad. It is so bad, in fact, that I nearly didn't care that my mom's idiot dog was barking in my ear through the second half of the movie because it almost mercifully blocked out some of the awful dialogue. I hated this movie. It is terribly made in almost every respect, and I don't want to hear it's title ever again.

Prior to its last 20 minutes, Pathology is nothing but a laughably bad exercise in sadism. Everything prior to the film's final moments is pure trash, with very little to save it, other than the hotness of Milo Ventimiglia's body (which is on display in the film's several gratuitous scenes that mix sex with blood and guts) and some horrible dialogue that has the benefit of at least being amusing.

Some could definitely call Pathology a so-bad-it's-good film, and while I wouldn't go that far, I have to admit the final 20 minutes make me give this a slightly higher rating than I normally would. Certain things happen that I didn't see coming, including certain people getting disposed of really quickly and drastically (this is done to allow for the final confrontation to take place between our hero and one sole villain). Also, a character dies that I didn't expect to see getting killed, and this leads to a nice little scene in which the protagonist performs an autopsy on this person, and during this scene, the same score that played during the final minutes of Babel plays, and it's effective (the DVD features an extended scene of it). However, the VERY last scene of the film is decidedly ludicrous.

Many will call Pathology a sick, sadistic film. I can't disagree with that, but I can't fully condemn it for that, simply because there ARE other movies out there that critics WOULD call "sick and sadistic" and I've actually enjoyed them. Still, Pathology is mostly inane, it suffers from poor performances, and it isn't technically impressive in any sense.

Surprisingly good movie, can't believe I didn't see it until now. A lot of deep, underlying tones about humanity, great work with cinematography as well. I highly suggest seeing it.

A movie about a group of medical students who likes to try to commit the perfect murder. The idea is not bad, it's just the execution that could have been better. You can sum up this movie in 3 words, sex, murder and drugs, in that order. This is a really graphic movie where they try to shock you all the time. Aside from the regular cutting up corpses, they have a lot of sex right next to corpses. They even have a scene with a fully nude Alyssa Milano corpse, you see Everything (which is obviously fake since she wasn't a porn actress the last time I checked). All in all, the story moves a bit too fast at times, they fuck a lot, murder a bunch of people for no real reason, and Milo Ventimiglia could have chosen a better script. Still, I give it a 7/10 for effort.