Eloise (2016) User Reviews

It wasn't THAT bad.

[stormatsunup · 6/10 · 7 June 2017]

The movie wasn't THAT bad. The only reason I watched it is because I grew up not far from there and didn't realize this was shot on site. I had never been in there but as a kid was threatened to be thrown in there 50 times (C'mon every town has one of these places that kids know of like "If you don't straighten up we're going to have you thrown in Shady Pines". Well for us it was Eloise).

The most horrifying thing about this movie was how they got that black dude to play that 1970s J.J. stereotype then have him stealing the drugs and shooting at everything. Having him nearly drown was the icing on the cake as you know black people are afraid of water too (eyeroll).

TRIVIA: Jackie Wilson is buried in a cemetery across the road from this place. It was paupers grave for years until they raised enough money for a proper monument.

4 people join forces to locate a death certificate in a closed psychiatric asylum in order for one of them to inherit 1.2 million dollars

[jmitastudios · 6/10 · 24 July 2017]

First, let me say I am not a horror film aficionado. I do not watch them, period. However I am extremely interested in urban exploration of abandoned mental hospitals. That is what peeked my interest initially.

The story line is your basic way to get into these abandoned hospitals, then the visions and hysteria that accompanies infiltration once there. I agree the acting left a lot to be desired, but I think the strength of the movie lies in the depiction of suspended reality. Which is real and which is imagined scenes? The film left me a bit unbalanced as I watched the 4 struggle with their own fears while in the very secret, very restricted annex.

Did anybody get the homeless guy? Well, I thought about him for awhile, then concluded he was the infamous Dr. H.H. Greiss in the flesh looking for a part of his life that was taken away from him. Watch this part carefully and see if you don't agree. I thought the plot twist at the end regarding the true relationships from the past was sheer genius, including that of Jacob and Dr. Greiss. Once again, having read the previous reviews, you should bypass the horror aspect and look at it from the perspective of hidden lives that were never fully buried.

The beginning shows Pia in some sort of room. Was that a modern version of Eloise? Was it jail, what was it? In the end they go back to the room with Pia. I liked that full circle inference and the parallel to what the patients of Eloise may have experienced. It depicts being unhinged in what seems to be a reality you are lost in, when no one believes what you have seen. Was the whole affair nothing but a figment of Pia's broken brain? Hmm, did she create the sketches, the receipts, the entire story because she was crazy and had been part of Eloise as a child, then locked away in an asylum for life, where she could only create a normal life by living in her head, but not really living it?

As horror, it left much to be desired. However, the story told may not be what you think, or maybe it is. You decide.

Descent to Death

[dcarsonhagy · 5/10 · 5 February 2017]

"Eloise" is a film based on the actual Eloise Asylum located in Michigan. Eloise has quite a history and not all of it good.

Jacob and Dell are pretty good friends, and when Jacob is advised of his father's death, he is also told by the attorney handling the estate that he is the sole inheritor of $1.2 million--providing he can get the actual death certificate of a former aunt who--you guessed it-- resided at Eloise. He tells Dell of his need and since Dell is also in dire need of cash (to the tune of $20,000) he agrees to help. They should have just waited for the state to declare his aunt officially dead.

Along the way they encounter Eliza Dushku and her brother who apparently has a connection AND the blueprints to Eloise. They break in; getting out is the problem.

I will not be as critical of this movie as most. I thought the story line was developed nicely (it did actually make sense), and the acting and directing was better than most movies of this genre. There was not an overuse of blood and gore and the director did manage to build some actual tension. That does not mean the movie is without its warts, because it did have plenty.

Rated "R" for language, disturbing images, and some violence. This one is a toss-up.

Premisea tough one...

[songod-95003 · 5/10 · 27 February 2017]

In horror movies whatever it takes to get the leads into the creepy house, forest, or in this case asylum usually isn't a major deal, but it does have to have some validity; at least for me. Campers camping, sure. Ghost hunters hunting, sure. Newlyweds in remote mountain cabin with a few pals celebrating, sure.

However in the case of "Eloise" we must buy into a legal statute saying someone must be missing 7 years to be declared dead. While this is a fairly common statute, in this instance, the person has been missing since 1982 when the asylum they were committed in burned. Still the protagonists lawyer insists it will take 7 years from the current date forward (not 1982, but the present) to declare them dead. Mentioned early in, it bugged me throughout.

The presumption of death would not be a major 7 year hurdle if the person has not been seen or heard from in 30+ years and had been committed to an asylum at the time it burned down. The same legal principal that was used after WWII to declare missing people dead would come into play. Anyway... fine spook show otherwise. If you do not let the absurd 7 year thing get in the way, you'll have fun.

Eloise is long gone

[neofacist · 3 August 2017]

Just to clear the record, Eloise has been gone since 1984, I know since I live close by and had field trips there with a psych course in the 1970's. Greedy developers wanted to build strip malls and tore down a magnificent piece of history, but that's the American way. The office building still exists on Michigan ave. next to the railroad tracks. My dad used to hand food over to inmates over the fence in the 1940's. Eloise would have made a fantastic museum that would have been world renown as they grew much of their food and they made things such as shoes which can be found on ebay. Its a real shame that its gone. The purpose of this post was to let viewers know that the real Eloise is long gone.

Not a great horror film, even by low budget standards.

[jeremy-david-kuehnau · 3/10 · 31 January 2017]

Eloise is a movie based on a real world location in Michigan, more specifically a closed sanitarium that was renowned for it's terrible medical practices.

The movie centers around a son who discovers he has the opportunity to inherent his Father's estate, which comes along with a hefty amount of money.

But there's a catch, he needs to get his Mother's death certificate. Everything seems easy enough until he discovers that his Mother's death certificate was actually moved to a different location and in order to get it, he would need to file go through a lengthy (and expensive) legal process.

So instead of going through the legal system and getting the paper work how he should (legally), he decides to break into the now defunct sanitarium with a friend.

I am not a lawyer, but the entire concept that the movie is focused on seems kind of sketchy, you'd think all of this would have been handled already. And why would their son need to go to court to get a copy of his Mother's death certificate?

Besides being riddled full of weird plot holes, at first glance the movie appears to be your generic haunted sanitarium , but it starts to get really goofy as the film goes on. Frankly, I feel the movie would have been much better if it had went for the generic spooky ghost film instead of what they went with.

The acting and cinematography are fine for what it is; I have no complaints. The writing is pretty shaky and the plot of the movie doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

To be honest, I wouldn't even rent this from a RedBox. If it came on NetFlix or Hulu or something and you got some time to burn (the movie isn't even 2 hours), then go for it, but I can't recommend spending actual money to see this film.

A wasted opportunity

[fairlesssam · 4/10 · 19 October 2017]

This movie is based on real location, Eloise Insane Asylum. Four young adults break into the now derelict Eloise to hunt for a death certificate needed to allow one of the four to claim his inheritance.

With a great cast, excellent location and pretty good story it had all the ingredients of a solid horror. Unfortunately it just doesn't gel. There have been many movies similar which have been made much better such as Grave Encounters, Dark Feed, Reel Evil and Sanatorium.

There was no atmosphere, it wasn't believable, the performances lacked charisma. It is a watchable film but is disappointing and not one that you would particularly want to re-watch.

Eloise is one among several other disappointing horrors we mostly see these days.

[shobanchittuprolu · 4/10 · 17 March 2017]

Eloise (2017): Almost 80% of the horrors have the same usual plot where group of buddies enter a haunted place and gets in trouble with an invisible force.Burnt hospitals and asylums are the most favorite picks of film makers to make a horror without any uch struggle.Eloise follows the same way and unfortunately into the same disappointment track.

Plot: Set in a defunct insane asylum known as 'Eloise,' four friends break into the abandoned institution in hopes of finding a death certificate, which will grant one of them the rights to a sizable inheritance. While inside the asylum, the group not only finds that Eloise houses a horrifying history but also the truth about their own tragic pasts.

Plus Points: 1)Decent reason for entering an asylum: Most of the horror films make the characters to go into the haunted places for fun or else for camping.But in Eloise,they go for retrieving a death certificate of a person such that it can bring them a huge fortune.

Minus Points: Except for a decent start,movie slowly descends into disaster in every possible way.There is not even a single scene which feels new.

Horror scenes are so poor and not at all scary.

Actors are average and did nothing to save this film.

Poor direction and writing spoiled the entire film.

So,Eloise is one among several other disappointing horrors we mostly see these days.

My rating 4/10

Okay Who forgot to bring the plot line?

[S_Soma · 3/10 · 31 January 2017]

Of all the elements that go into the making of a movie, by far the most difficult to do well is the plot line. Most of the other elements in a movie (lighting, cinematography, music, acting, etc.) can almost be guaranteed if you have enough of a budget to purchase the appropriate talent. But getting a good story? That's almost always a crap shoot. Certainly there are some writers who have a better track record than others for producing quality stories, but it's never a shoo-in.

And nowhere are these truths more apparent than in ELOISE. Overall, the fundamental production values within ELOISE are much higher than they are for the average of this sort of movie. There are at least two "namebrand" actors in the movie: Eliza Dushku and Robert Patrick, both of whom have long and well-established careers and both do a decent job in ELOISE. Brandon T. Jackson is a little less well-established but he certainly does a respectable job with the thin material he is given.

Lighting, sound and music are all professionally polished.

A particularly interesting element to this movie is that it's not merely BASED upon an actual insane asylum, but almost everything about the asylum is completely real. Even the name of the movie itself is the actual name of the real place, and much of the movie is really shot there (at least what of it is still left standing today).

Here's a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_(psychiatric_hospital)

Here's a for sale listing if you'd like to buy one of the remaining buildings which appears in the movie: http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/19494723/30600-Michigan-Avenue- Westland-MI/?linkcode=31060

Here's a YouTube video which claims to show images taken at the asylum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNbF3FNNXpo , although it's impossible to know if these images are actually from the asylum for a certainty.

It's worth a Google search and rooting around the Internet for a while. The history of the place is fascinating and the "insane asylum" part of it is actually only one aspect of something that evolved through many different incarnations and purposes over its overall 145 year existence.

ELOISE's reputation as a haunted place is an open question to be answered by those who believe in that sort of thing. There have been many medical advances over the last couple of hundred years but we would naturally view some of the medical practices that historically happened there as horrific by today's standards. The whole field of psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness, and even the definition of mental illness itself, have more or less invented themselves during that same time period. Given the arrogant but popular tendency to judge other eras by our own standards so in vogue nowadays, this certainly provides a context of rich material to draw from. Whatever horrors actually happened at ELOISE are largely a function of insufficient funding, incessant overcrowding and the primitive state of what science was involved. I'm sure future generations will look back upon the present day with similar horror.

So ELOISE certainly has a lot of things going for it.

And then the whole thing is topped off with one of the worst plot lines EVER, even for the "haunted insane asylum" ilk.

ELOISE brings nothing new or original or even interesting to the haunted asylum genre. Fundamentally it confabulates and intermingles the notion of ghosts and some bizarre variation of timeshifting/time travel. It's as if the director said, "It's an insane asylum, right? So let's just throw a bunch of insane, disjointed and disconnected crap at the screen and hope for the best." What ELOISE calls horror is mostly just throwing our heroes somehow back in time and distorting practitioners in bygone eras as monsters gleefully enjoying torturing people rather than simply doing the best they knew to do at the time.

And there are a few more crimes against cinema, in no particular order:

Dictated by the plot line, Robert Patrick is woefully underutilized and is clearly a ringer brought in purely for his name and face. I would be surprised if his total on-screen time added up to more than 5 minutes.

Brandon T. Jackson, unbelievably, is literally used as the token- black-guy-who-gets-killed-first trope.

In a desperate attempt to make an un-scary and tiresome movie more scary, there are constant, blinding strobe flashes (supposed to be lightning happening outside) to create "atmosphere" but only serve to either give you a headache or an epileptic seizure.

I wouldn't exactly call GRAVE ENCOUNTERS a top-quality movie, but it's plot line had a lot more going for it in terms of the haunted asylum concept then did ELOISE.

A murky chiller ...

[parry_na · 7/10 · 20 July 2019]

Chace Crawford - a Hollywood name if ever there was one - plays Jacob Martin, a young man whose father has just passed away, leaving him $1.2 million. However, to avoid seven years of red tape regarding getting his hands on the money, he has to prove the death of his Aunt Genevieve (Nicole Forester), whowas committed to an asylum, and whose death certificate is held there.

Now, this is really just a convoluted way of giving 'a group of friends' a reason to break into and explore a spooky, abandoned medical facility late one stormy night. I'm quite happy with the fact that the actual reason for them being there doesn't survive much probing, because the location is very creepy, and the cinematography really enhances that. Equally, the incidental score and sound design plays a huge part - in fact, Ronan Lander's music might be my favourite aspect of the production. The storyline is pretty confusing, but again, I like something that requires the audience pays attention, even in this case, attention might not be enough to make sense of it all.

SPOILERS - Years ago, Jacob's aunt was admitted to the asylum for her worsening schizophrenic outbursts. Flashbacks that seem to emanate from the building itself inform Jacob (and us) she was actually made pregnant by Robert Patrick's pioneering but evil Doctor Greiss (either after her incarceration or before, this is not made clear) and to keep the liaison secret, the doctor orders the child destroyed. However, the child is rescued and allowed to escape the hospital, and grows up ... to be Jacob. On returning to the asylum at his father's last wish, Jacob is seemingly killed (we last see him being incarcerated in a morgue drawer, gagged so 'he doesn't wake the dead'), which somehow negates the child's existence, or at very least, gets rid of the problem. There, is that clear? I haven't made any kind of study of this, but that is my take on a story that leaves a lot to interpretation. Again, I have no problem with that approach, but there is a lot to take in here. For example, the room full of containers full of ashes, some of which are spilled, has some significance. As does the somnambulistic vagrant man who appears a couple of times. As does the nature of the seemingly shifting time lines. Answers on a postcard please ...!

The fact that I am still trying to puzzle out some of these moments, and the fact that I will inevitably watch this again indicates that I care enough about 'Eloise', and I did enjoy the murky nature of the story-telling. Even the characters, who appear dull and unappealing at the beginning, grew on me. I'm giving this a 7 out of 10.

A Complete Mess

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 14 February 2017]

When his estranged father dies in Detroit, Jacob Martin (Chace Crawford) is summoned by the lawyer to attend the funeral and to acknowledge the will of his father. Martin learns that his father has 1.2 million-dollar that he may inherit provided he brings the death certificate of his aunt Genevieve Martin (Nicole Forester) to the lawyer. He also learns that she spent her last days in the mental institution Eloise that is abandoned after a fire but keeps a small office working.. Jacob requests the death certificate to the clerk but it would take many months to get it. So he decides to break in the asylum with his friend Dell Richards (Brandon T. Jackson) and teams up with the local Pia (Eliza Dushku) and her retarded brother Scott Carter (P.J. Byrne) to steal the death certificate of his aunt. Jacob succeeds and finds the document but Scott and Dell have hallucinations and disappears. While Jacob and Pia seek them out, they have visions and relives the past of Eloise when the sadistic and insane director Dr. H.H. Greiss (Robert Patrick) conducted dreadful and sick experiments with his patients.

"Eloise" is a horror film with a storyline that is a complete mess. The plot is absurd but logic in the beginning until the moment learns that he needs a court order to get the necessary document. From this moment on, the plot is awful and senseless. The characters are not-well developed and the viewer never learns why Jacob has a problem with his father; who is the criminal Dell; or the fate of Scott that simply disappears. The good thing is to see Eliza Dushku on the big screen again. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

You will be a new man

[nogodnomasters · 9/10 · 5 August 2017]

Jacob Martin (Chace Crawford) discovers his father has died and has left him a considerable inheritance with a catch. He must first prove his aunt (Nicole Forester) is dead, a person who most likely succumbed at the great fire of the Eloise Asylum. Her records are in the annex and can not be accessed without a court order which would take several months. Jacob's friend (Brandon T. Jackson) has an urgent need for money, so they opt to do a second story liberation. They enlist the help of Scott (P.J. Byrne) a slightly mentally dysfunctional person, and his sister Pia (Eliza Dushku) to look after Scott. Their mother worked at the infamous hospital known for "confrontation therapy" and Scott knows how to sneak into the records room.

It was a dark and stormy night....

This is the type of film that has been done many times before. It opens with a plot spoiler as an incident is being investigated. We already know two people who die and one survivor. Robert Patrick plays the evil doctor. There is also a Nurse Fletcher (Milica Govich) clearly a nod to Louise Fletcher. I don't mind stories that are familiar if they are done well. The acting was good. The intensity was spot on. The dialogue was decent.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity

pretty spooky and fun

[forensic-nerd · 7/10 · 28 March 2019]

Most horror movies nowadays are super duper cheesy and not that great. Eloise is pretty good. Not the best, but also not horrible. If i'm honest, i REALLY enjoyed Eloise. However, the first quarter of the movie is quite slow, kind of boring. The ending is pretty satisfying. I like it. Nice job. 7/10

What did I just watch?

[TerribleKatherine · 4/10 · 17 January 2018]

I am baffled quite honestly. I didn't think it was particularly a bad movie; the cast did a good job, especially Dushku, who always delivers. The plot,, well, I did understand it, although that "jumping-from-era-to-era" is something that I do hate in horror movies. I feel like when you don't have a strong enough story or a working script to make things understood by subtle exposition, ghosts and going through the haunted place, you take the characters literally to the past. And when you mix the past and the now.. well, it's usually confusing as f*ck. And maybe I missed something, but Dell just disappeared. I don't recall him killed or anything or maybe I was so bored I missed it. Also, the mother of the siblings, the nurse.. she just didn't come home from work? They didn't search her or anything? Patrick's character most likely killed her because she took the baby away. But when Jacob was locked up in the sanatorium in the end, that meant that Jacob was always there, because he "came back" and was pronounces death at birth?? Was the nurse still missing? Oh god, my head hurts.. SO, because all of this bs, only 4/10. Liked the cast, liked the plot for the most part.. but.. come on, give me a break.

What a DUD!!

[tony-55965 · 1/10 · 3 February 2017]

What a DUD!! This movie is un-watchable. The plot is impossible to follow and makes no sense at all. The dismal execution between the high school quality plot-direction and a flat out failure at "scary" are the proverbial "nails in the coffin" for this movie. Actually, calling it a movie, does an injustice to the word "movie". The characters act as if they were just thrown into the mix. Poor direction is an understatement. Which brings up the question of how this movie ever got made? Makes you wonder if there was any adult oversight - its truly that bad! The other questions that beg asking is how did the actors ever accept these roles? What were they thinking (or were they)? And, were they that desperate - or was greed the motivating factor? In my opinion, for the actors and director, this is career ending material, or at best, definitely career changing (for the worse). This one will more than likely be lining the discount bin of your local dollar store in the not to distant future. Final question - how do I get my money back?

Same Same

[Tak005 · 3/10 · 25 October 2018]

There is a myriad of horror/thriller movies where for whatever reason a group of people enter a former "insane" asylum. Whereupon they are haunted and hunted by the ghosts of the previous patients. This is just another one of those movies. I've just given you the plot of this movie and many others. Nothing really different, except a few we'll known names are attached to the project. One suspects these movies are cheap to make. Derelict buildings used always in darkness. If you are into the genre by all means watch it. Otherwise only give a go if not much else is happening.

The Movie was Eh

[stylehoranpaynetomlinsonmalik · 4/10 · 26 August 2017]

I am not saying I know what a good movie is, I've watched plenty of Horror, Thriller, Psychological movies in my time and I know what passes for good. This movie wasn't terrible, but it did run on the line of a horror movie that was a movie so quickly that it the only thing you were focusing on was putting everything they were spitting out together, and not the actual movie.

For Example, If you watch the movie which if you're reading this now you probably won't but in the movie, they jump back and forth in time, which is interesting but at the same time confusing. At one point you have a character high off his butt, running around shooting a gun and then he gets locked in a random room that starts flooding with water and he can't get out. You're staring at the screen asking yourself, how! Like how did the door lock? how isn't the water escaping, How is the water filling the room in the first place, and after his death his friends don't look for him and he doesn't get any more screen time like he is completely forgotten.

Then you have another character who at the same time is having a procedure so it jumps back and forth, and you're not really understanding it because it's jumping back and forth and it looks like ghost is doing it to him but then it's actually him.

All I am saying was the concept was there but they didn't do a good job bringing it.

Went a bit silly

[elliotjeory · 5/10 · 1 October 2021]

The best thing about this film is that it has a solid production and doesn't look cheap for a low budget film, it started ok and had potential but it went a bit silly I think. The third act could of been better but overall it was ok.

Caught in a dream

[Howling_at_the_Moon_Reviews · 5/10 · 22 April 2023]

This wasn't nearly as bad as you might presume initially. After watching the trailer, it gives you very run-of-the-mill, cliche, cringe, indi horror but it proved to be better than that.

Now while this wasn't anything wildly original or innovative it was still a tad different than what you've seen before and all in all entertaining. It lacked mostly in its delivery overall I would say though. A lot of moments felt canned and stilted and a bit hokey at times.

Regardless, it was creepy with some solid spook factor. The acting was, passable. Lead guy did better than I was expecting (don't expect too much from a pretty boy Hollywood type lol). I was leaning towards a 6 but the ending, was not bad, but a little unfulfilling. Would recommend.

Asylum film are always a bit spooky

[kathmurray-43485 · 6/10 · 15 May 2019]

Good film but very misunderstood ending. The fact that it's based on a real hospital gives it better quality.

Dumb movie

[seckinlergafri · 1/10 · 8 August 2018]

This horror movie is very boring, stupid, cliche and a waste of time ... This film is very confusing, weird ... I don't understand the storyline of this film

Chilling if somewhat flawed effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 8/10 · 7 October 2017]

Following his father's death, a young man in need of a paper for the inheritance finds that it's placed in an abandoned mental hospital and gathers a few friends to help retrieve it only to find the area haunted by the ghosts of residents who died there and must make it out alive.

For the most part, this one wasn't all that bad an effort. Most of what really works here are the incredibly strong atmosphere present here as the film makes the most of its genuinely haunting setting. The asylum is quite unnerving here, with the Gothic atmosphere given quite a prominent showcase being filled with long hallways, twisting designs and cramped rooms filled with the elaborate decor in a state of disuse and neglect. This overall look works nicely with the raging thunderstorm and utter darkness of the situation to create an eerie, effectively chilling location that gives the scenes plenty of weight for later. The haunting scenes here are quite fun, from the one victim suffering from continuous ghostly hallucinations around him that the rest of the group is unaware of, the hallucination of the doctor and his staff operating on the one friend or the chilling sequence of the ghosts trapping the one victim in the flooding room and trying to drag him underwater which is shown from his perspective as well as theirs which adds to the dizzying nature of the scene. Other big scenes include their twisted trip into the dining room which turns into them experiencing the crazy parties of the past where the patients and hospital staff converge together in a wild celebration which is all the eerier for taking place in a distorted sepia-toned view. The final half, which features their true selves back in the past where they get subjected to the tortures of their own fears generates a rather fun time as there's a fun time going through the potential traps and eventual escape that occurs here. These manage to hold it up over the few rather small flaws present. The main issue that brings this one down is the film's rather clumsy and haphazard story that comes off rather strangely at times. Though it generates the required setup for the story, there's no real reason why the kid himself is the one that's needed to visit the asylum under the direction of the lawyer's office which would've handled that matter for him. This unrealistic set-up is only a part of it all, which extends to how they plan to go about breaking in and stealing the material which doesn't make any sense at all and hampers the storyline with its incredulity. Likewise, the film takes quite a while to get going with the discovery of the hospital's past that it really flies through its torture scenes due to the lengthy and rather overlong first half that could've been cut down considerably. The other issue here is that there's no real reason for their continuous back choices that befall so many scenes here that basically put them into danger quite often throughout here to move the film along which becomes quite infuriating. These here are what hold this one back.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Fairly decent movie.

[LoupGarouTFTs · 6/10 · 5 September 2020]

I wouldn't pay big money to see it, maybe I wouldn't even retrieve a CD out of the $5 bin. However, this movie is a fine way to spend a rainy afternoon or evening in front of the television without expending a lot of mental power.

The story is a familiar one: a group of young people go into a building to die. Sure, there's always a reason for them to be there to die, but even though the reasons vary, they are there to die. In this case, the story behind them being there is thin: Jacob needs to prove his aunt is dead by retrieving a death certificate.

As other people have pointed out, this proof of death would probably already have been recorded. However, given the almost-immediate occurrence of the fire following his aunt's death and considering how thoroughly some bodies may have been consumed, I'll give the film makers that one. The problem is not so much then, that Jacob must retrieve proof of her death--it's just that he doesn't want to wait to do it. His sense of entitlement is what leads to everyone's death. Without that sense of entitlement, the woman behind the desk would not have given him "admittance," which would have kept him, at least, from being consumed by the hospital.

A lot of people had complaints about Jacob's friend, Dell. Dell was nothing more than a stereotype, according to these complaints--however--he was exactly the type of person that Jacob would have kept around him. An entitled person like Jacob wouldn't care very much about another person's ethics, as long as he could benefit from the other person's abilities and associates. Dell was there to provide Jacob with whatever he needed and, in the movie, he was there to provide Jacob with the ability to break in and to steal something. He was willing to do something for Jacob because of money, not due to any fealty to Jacob. Each was using the other. Dell could have been any race or either sex--it was simply unfortunate that the producers chose the most stereotypical of the types (then again--diversity, you know).

I think that the story was interesting enough, as far as it goes. The back and forth through time made it something of a poor person's "The Shining." This back and forth made the story seem more complex than it actually was: Jacob was admitted to the hospital to make amends for his being removed in the first place. It was an inevitable end the second he received permission to enter, when the form "admitted" him to Eloise. Remember what the film said--once you're admitted to Eloise, you can never leave. The others were just collateral damage. The homeless man was not Dr. Greiss, as another poster pointed out. Rather, he was the orderly that grabbed Jacob and pulled him back into the building and back into the past. He didn't say anything to Jacob when they encountered each other at the beginning of the movie, but the orderly somehow recognized him for who he was--perhaps due to the admittance form.

The movie relied to heavily on chance encounters. However, it seems entirely possible that, if you go back to Jacob's father's death, their encounters were not as random as you might expect. Could it be possible that the suicide set things in motion? Is it possible that the suicide was not a suicide at all? After all, the blood was fresh when Jacob found it. Either the blood was fresh because his father was newly dead or the blood was fresh because the event was supernatural (discounting film maker error, of course). With this theory in mind, then nothing was a coincidence and everything was enacted to bring Jacob back to the hospital, where he could be contained as he "should have" been all those years before.

The biggest problem with this movie, for me, was that none of the characters were particularly likable, with, perhaps the exception of Scott. Every one of them was self-centered and unpleasant, although Pia could be somewhat excused for wanting to protect her brother. Scott was also annoying, until the viewer came to realize that the pictures of him getting lobotomized were real memories and not simply something created by the hospital to frighten him. Of all of the characters, he was the most empathetic. It's too bad that he was not permitted to survive the film, which I think would have made a better ending.

Predictable Yet Convuluted

[jampac53 · 1/10 · 2 July 2018]

After getting past the stupid legalities purported to make this set up possible, one of my favorites was Sam bringing them into the building through this tight little wedge so we could find out what Jake's "fear" is. They travel around in the building when lo and behold a security guard just walks right in the front door!I guess this brain trust foursome didn't think to try that! And it only goes downhill from there. I don't recall Dell saying he was afraid of water or drowning but he walks into a walk through room where both doors close and water pours in and he drowns. And yet Jake & Pia only once say his name when they are looking for Sam & wonder where Dell is & he is then totally forgotten for the rest the film. I hope Robert Patrick got paid well to put himself into this drivel. And pretty much the same for Eliza Dushku.

God-awful!

[JWBly · 1/10 · 10 February 2017]

Oh, dear Lord – where to begin? A horror film? The only thing horrific about this movie is that it was filmed at all. The plot is nonsensical to the point of being laughable. The acting is forgettable to say the least, and this from a guy who has tremendous admiration for Eliza Dushku. But even her fading skills cannot resurrect this travesty. The plot holes are so huge and so numerous as to belie description. Let's start with the asylum itself, supposedly abandoned for 30 years. Amazingly, it still has power to all the lights, although they all are flickering constantly. Having all the red EXIT lights still visible and functioning after three decades was a nice touch. The hospital medicine cabinet is still fully stocked after 30 years, which allows one of the ridiculously unnecessary characters to accidentally absorb some LSD. Say what? I found myself regularly saying "Seriously?" out loud, even though I was alone. It was that bad. Not even any gratuitous sex scenes to liven things up, nor does the still-luscious Eliza even wear any form fitting clothes for some desperately-needed eye candy. This film disappoints on virtually every level. I would give it a zero rating if I could. The only thing you will want after watching is to somehow get that wasted hour and a half back. Eliza, Eliza ... are times really that hard now?