I Think There’s Something Wrong With My Corpse
Main Cast: Corri English, Scot Davis
Director: Jason Todd Ipson
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Med students Alison (Corri English, The Bedford Diaries), Brian (Scot Davis, THE RIDE), Carlos (Joshua Alba, ALPHA DOG), and Rick (Jay Jablonksi, EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE ITALIAN) have been teamed up in their gross anatomy class, and been given the task of dissecting a cadaver, which they’ve named “Norma”. While the men start to disassemble and dissect Norma’s chest cavity, Alison finds herself focusing on the wounds down Norma’s face, determining them to be self-inflicted, and wondering what in life could have happened to bring this woman to this point.
The men tell Alison not to concern herself with it, that, as a doctor, she’s going to come across many more bodies in much worse shape than this one. But then one night Rick sneaks his girlfriend into the lab to see the body. She touches Norma’s exposed chest cavity, then almost immediately bleeds out right there. The ordeal sends Rick to the psych ward and Alison on a quest to find out who Norma is.
While UNREST isn’t your typical horror movie, it’s got just enough common elements to make it seem familiar and welcoming. The story comes from director Jason Todd Ipson (PEEPING TOM, EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE ITALIAN), who has medical school experience and wanted to tell as realistic a story in this setting as possible, which I dig. Ipson and Chris Billett turned the idea into a script. The result is a very accessible movie that pleases the die-hard horror fan in me very much.
English and the rest of the ensemble work well together, and the story holds onto its secrets just long enough to keep things interesting. The rising body count is unnecessary and smacks of a desperate attempt at attention-seeking, but overall UNREST works very well. There’s that sense of Japanese “vengeful ghost” thing going on, but we never see a jittery, pale-skinned girl with long black hair hanging in her face lumbering down the hallway. In fact, aside from the body on the table in the lab, an actual “villain” never appears. There’s a scene where one character becomes possessed and takes themselves out of the picture, but throughout the majority of the movie, the terror is implied in what we know is coming, or in the danger posed to the characters overall.
Through the use of the hospital as a character, Ipson establishes the hell out of the mood and is able to instill some seriously creepy moments; after all, empty hospital corridors in the middle of the night are only trumped in creepiness by empty high school corridors in the middle of the night, and even then it’s a tight race.
Most of the goriest stuff in UNREST is just from the gross anatomy class itself as they dissect Alita’s body, although there’s a fair amount of blood spilled later, as well.
While the first part of the movie feels like an ensemble piece, English’s Alison is definitely the main character, and Ipson deals very well with her development, establishing her in clearly-written, definitive scenes which plot her growth from timid first-year student to full-fledged horror movie heroine.
While UNREST isn’t changing the way I see horror movies, it’s definitely better than a lot of the other dreck I’ve watched, so for that I have to admire it even more. Ipson had a good story here and the cast came together to make it as enjoyable as possible, and in the end, I spent a pretty decent 88 minutes with it. I felt like I was watching something from the 80s, only with better acting, but it definitely had that old school vibe. It ain’t a work of genius, but it’s a labor of love and that effort pays off big.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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