Fantastic Fest ’13 Review: ‘PATRICK’ (2013)

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Director Mark Hartley makes his feature film debut after bringing us some amazing documentaries about some of the wildest genre cinema from the past. Surprisingly, his first feature has more restraint than the wild and crazy approach of Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed.

Patrick stars Sharni Vinson as Kathy, our current favorite final girl from You’re Next, as a nurse who is looking to fulfill a position at a new special care facility that seems to deal with comatose patients. She has to report to a very strict matron nurse and a questionable doctor who could be conducting mad experiments with a patient of his named Patrick. Kathy makes friends with another nurse and we learn that Kathy was previously engaged but is no longer. Throughout her working hours, she discovers that Patrick is responsive, can hear her, and is not apparently in the coma that everyone thinks he is in. Deaths occur and the mystery unravels.

Hartley sets in his gothic horror hooks in early. The set design of the film is so contrasting it shapes the film to be a very theatrical and something that I would assume would look great in black and white. Hartley is not interested in making a modern horror film, he is more interested in celebrating the past of genre cinema and putting it on full display for modern horror fans. With a combination of the set design that seems like it was built for a 70’s British horror film and shot compositions that remind you of the technical aspects of Brian De Palma.

The performances by Sharni Vinson and Charles Dance lend a certain credibility to the piece as opposed to a fan tribute to the original Richard Franklin film that this remake/re-imagining is based off of. There is levity here and that is one of the attributes I enjoyed with Patrick. The script is predictable and doesn’t bring anything new or to the table. Jump scares littered throughout the film and they could be taken as a bit of an annoyance, especially those that have thought that we were done with this device in horror cinema (we aren’t as evident in Insidious: Chapter 2). If you view the film knowing that this is a tribute to genre cinema and appreciate the fact that this style hasn’t been displayed in a film in quite some time, there is admiration to be had.

Hartley has always said that he wanted to get into narrative filmmaking and that this documentaries have always been happy mistakes. I feel if he continues on his path of making genre narrative films, we could actually see this man direct something with such tact that will put him on par with some of the attributes he is paying tribute to.