Not since Zombie Death House have I sat down for a violent-prisoners-take-out-the-staff horror treat. Something tells me the hair won’t have nearly enough volume in 2010’s Medium Raw…
Quick Plot: Some years ago, a serial killer dubbed The Wolf killed a lot of little girls, including our hero Johnny Morgan’s kid sister. Now a surly young detective, Johnny (played by director Andrew Cymek) gets his second chance at catching the elusive killer when his mentor (John Rhys-Davies in non-dwarf form) discovers he has returned.
Meanwhile, Johnny’s new wife Jamie is a psychiatrist at a maximum security asylum for the criminally insane. It’s a darkly lit place with a bad reputation, as its former head doctor was a fan of torturous therapy. Now run by his son Dr. Robert Parker (William B. Davis), the hospital operates under the theory that insanity can be cured and treated with kindness. When that doesn’t work, all patients wear electric shock collars that send a mean jolt if they get too close to the staff.
You see where this is going, right?
After Johnny collars The Wolf (real name: Harold Grierson), justice takes a turn when lawyer Mercedes McNab (better known to Sunnydale citizens as Harmony) gets Grierson a softer sentence to, you guessed it, the same asylum Jamie (now separated from Johnny) does her rounds. Once a nurse’s granddaughter comes to visit wearing a red cloak on Christmas Eve, you can bet a steak dinner that the power will go out and the tables will turn.
Medium Raw is an unusual film in both good ways and bad. It’s hard to dislike any inmates-take-it-back film, simply because such a Marat/Sade premise will always yield something fun. In this case, we get a cheerfully mad nudist in a Santa hat, a brutal giant with a soft spot for Jamie’s singing and a hard spot for the color red, a god-loving psycho who talks like Macho Man, and a deceptively grandmotherly patient named Mabel who just so happens to be a cannibal with specific cooking techniques. All that stuff? Super.
Unfortunately, we also get their victims. Cymek looks the part of a young distressed detective, but he never really seems to be weighted by the horrors he’s experienced. Brigitte Kingsley (also the producer) is dreadfully miscast (and mis-styled) as a brilliant doctor who looks and acts more like a centerfold. Their scenes together lack any real chemistry, which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t drawn out in the worst possible way.
I’m being very specific when I say “drawn out in the worst possible way” because it’s quite literal. At one point, Jamie is trapped in a James Bond-ish slow death drowning apparatus. She knows her time is short—like, really really really really short—and so she urges Johnny to go save someone else and get back to her if he can. Considering the fact that every second counts, you’d think he would make up his mind then launch into action and return with equal speed. Instead, Cymek uses this scene to show how sad he is by the whole thing, i.e., standing there looking torn, vowing not to leave, then deciding to leave but continuously turning around before trotting away. Take your time dude. No rush.
Except yes rush, because tick tock. You’d think Johnny would learn his lesson when he returns to find Jamie’s cage underwater. Rather than immediately SPRINTING towards it, he takes the moment to stop, shout “Jamie!,” and then run to her aide. I know it’s the kind of detail that works for dramatic effect, but when time being of the essence has been DRILLED into this subplot, it’s impossible for an audience member to ignore how stupid his actions seem.
I realize I’m harping on small things, but there are a lot of those kinds of poor choices that keeps Medium Raw from ever being as effective as it could be. We even have two assumedly ace detectives investigating an extremely violent criminal without calling backup, as if everything they learned about police work came from Danny Glover’s incompetence in Saw.
These things aside, Medium Raw does have plenty to enjoy. The oddly black humored impromptu cannibal cooking lesson is twisted fun, and a lot of the fairy tale imagery (when not obvious) creates an artistically unsettling tone. Of course, it would help if we could actually SEE the details, something Cymek seems loathe to do based on the pitch black lighting choices. I suppose it’s meant to heighten the mood or show us the darkness of the asylum but really, it just means I squinted a lot.
Not. Pleasant.
High Notes
The actual design of The Wolf’s chainmail garb is wonderfully weird
The Juggernaut-ish big guy who hates red is wonderfully used as a sort of tool of the good and bad. We see from his interactions with Jamie that he’s psychologically unbalanced, not naturally evil. It’s an interesting touch that works well when Johnny enlists him as his own sort of weapon against The Woodcutter
Low Notes
Dear Lighting Department: It’s nice to see things now and then. Yours, Emily
Lessons Learned
Lawyers’ personal files always include a sexy headshot
All toes are important
Acceptable workwear for a psychiatrist in a home for the criminally insane includes skin-tight t-shirts, miniskirts, and knee-high leather boots with heels sharp enough to cut through arteries
When someone cooks your staff for dinner, that person is not your friend
Rent/Bury/Buy
When it comes to most of the newer genre films on Instant Watch, Medium Raw is something different. So long as you can get by the fact that everybody onscreen acts like an idiot (and that the lead two act rather terribly), it’s not an awful way to waste away 90 minutes. And hey, it gives us a double shot of holiday AND mental asylum horror. For that, I can be thankful with a mediocre product.