Madness and possible supernatural horror intersect and dance a delicate mixture of blurred psychological lines in John Keeyes' The Harrowing, a low budget yet nonetheless impressive and sometimes outright spectacular mind bending shocker that plays like Shutter Island by way of Hellraiser. A vice cop (Matthew Tompkins) goes undercover with the help of his shady, bad tempered lieutenant (Michael Ironside) in a potentially sinister mental asylum run by an unorthodox pseudo-psychiatrist (Arnold Vosloo) to find out how and why his partner was viciously butchered by another colleague who spent time in the facility. As he descends further into both the physical routines and labyrinthine mental states the place induces, he starts to become unsure of whether heinous sinister wrongdoings are being perpetrated or if it's simply all happening in his own very sick mind. Now, there are a lot of films like this, both in the A-list game and direct to video horror fare, but filmmaker Keeyes really knows how to walk an agonizing tightrope here, offering up ambiguity instead of answers and creating a beautifully diabolical trip of a narrative that has one questioning after the fact what was real, imagined and whether tangible demonic forces were at play or simply tricks of an unwell psyche. Ironside is great as his usual gruff self, while the consistently underrated Vosloo (The Mummy) lets it rip here in a sometimes mercurial, sometimes Machiavellian portrayal of a figure who may be benign mental health professional or may be an actual literal demon from hell, and the constant lack of clarity on that is a big creep factor and asset to the film. It's scrappy, weirdly under-lit in places and some of the acting is very, shall we say, of the independent film variety. But it's also vividly alive in dark psychological ideas, bursting with wonderfully grotesque gore and monster makeup and edited in jagged, hellish untethered fashion for maximum disorienting and spooky effect. Highly recommended.
