r Wicked Things Horror Blog: Horror & Suspense Movies About Insanity

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Horror & Suspense Movies About Insanity

Committed (2011) - Having recently lost her fiance, clinical psychologist Celeste DuPont decides to accept a staff position at New England’s Milburn Institute, a remote psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. 

Under the careful guidance of her mentor, Dr. Quilley, Celeste subscribes to his method of therapy, allowing the patients to consider themselves “guests” and letting each create a persona of their choice. But to her horror, Celeste learns that she has actually been committed to the facility as a patient and that she’s trapped in the institution. 

After several attempts to escape, strange visions and her relationship with Dr. Desmond Moore begin to make her doubt her own sanity. Celeste must now uncover the truth before she becomes a permanent guest.

I watched this movie on Lifetime of all places.  I won't lie.  Lifetime is a channel that is primarily for women and since I am one, I like Lifetime and now a few guys who like it too and won't admit to it openly.  Shut up a-holes, its good!

You can watch it here on the Lifetime Movie website if you have Comcast XFinity or Verizon FiOs.  Other providers are listed there, too!

Otherwise, Committed is available here.

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a criminal, who is serving a short-term sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although
he does isn't obviously batsh*t crazy, he tries to get out of serving at the labor camp in a nice, easy mental health driven environment.


His ward is run by Nurse Ratched, who is a wicked b*tch.  She is really just a Dominatrix in a nurse suit (not the sexy kind), who uses understated humiliation, nasty medical treatments and a boring daily routine to suppress her male patients. McMurphy finds that they are more fearful of Ratched than they are focused on becoming functional in the outside world.  

Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched), the black dress clad grandmother from Flower's in the Attic, but young is wicked scary and she portrays an absolute perfect Sadist.  McMurphy's and Ratched's battle of wills ensue almost immediately.
He tries to bring joy and a reason to live to the lives of these men, enriching them as he is probably the most sympathetic character in the whole movie besides a really large Mountain of a Native American Man (he's absolutely huge) who doesn't speak and is in the ward for murder.


McMurphy is informed that he has been committed indefinitely. The fun ends when he stirs the men and some are "sent upstairs", which means they get electroshock theraphy.  McMurphy gets shock therapy and is really effed up after and tries to escape.  The true horror really begins at the end!
This is a cinematic gem.

A young Jack Nicholson, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif (The Movie Voice of Charles Lee Ray, otherwise known as The Killer Doll, "Chucky"), and Danny DeVito are the best mental patients ever!  This was Brad's first movie, actually, and he's a pretty underrated actor.


I actually just noticed that Scatman Corothers, the orderly in the movie, Mr. Turkle, is Dick Halloran in The Shining, again with a seriously crazed Jack Nicholson.  I just noticed that right now!   Cool!!!  I would hang out with this dude every day and just have him give me kernels of wisdom.  I have the shine, too, Dick!

Nurse Ratched has gotten hotter with age.  You go, Nurse Ratched!

You can watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest free here.
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Gothika (2003) - a film which stars Halle Berry and Robert Downey Jr. Halle portrays a psychiatrist who gets in a car accident nobody bears witness to and she winds up waking up in the very asylum in which she practices. She has to figure out what the hell happened, why she got there, and who committed the horrifying crime for which she is accused.
Gothika is available on Netflix.  Gothika is also available on Amazon & Amazon Prime, Vudu, and iTunes

The Uninvited (2009) - Emily Browning stars in this thriller, which is the American version of the 2003 South Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters, in which she returns home from a psychiatric hospital visit which resulted following the death of her mother.  When she arrives home, Anna is shocked to discover that her father has recently gotten engaged to Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), her mother's former nurse. 

Anna's suspicions about Rachel are quickly realized to be true when her deceased mother contacts her from the beyond the grave to warn the girl and her sister to try and convince their father that Rachel is not who he thinks she is. 

You can watch The Univited on Vudu, Amazon, Best Buy's Cinema Now, and iTunes.  Its Korean version, A Tale of Two Sisters is available on Netflix.


 The Attic (2008) - After her family moves into a new house, Emma starts to see visions of her dead twin sister. For her, the attic of her Victorian house may deliver the answer to her questions, but when she starts going up there, she starts getting all crazy.


Strait Jacket (1964) - After spending the last two decades in an insane asylum for decapitating her husband and his lover, Lucy (Academy Award winner Joan Crawford) moves into her daughter's (Diane Baker) farmhouse and attempts to put her life back together. But is she truly reformed? When more than just the chickens start to lose their heads around the farm, suspicions arise that Lucy may be falling back into her old ax-wielding ways.

Cast

        Joan Crawford
        Diane Baker
        Leif Erickson
        Howard St. John
        John Anthony Hayes
        Rochelle Hudson
        George Kennedy
        Edith Atwater
        Mitch Cox

Such a tiny woman to be so awesome and terrifying!
I just have one thing left to say about this,
NO MORE WIRE HANGERS, EVER!!!!!!!!!!

In Dreams (1999) - One of the most underrated horror slash psychological thriller genre films made at the end of the 1990's was In Dreams, which was released on January 15, 1999 in the United States and slightly later in the spring in the United Kingdom.  The film, which was directed by Neil Jordan, the director of The Crying Game and Interview With a Vampire, was based on a novel called Doll's Eyes written by Bari Wood.  It has gotten terrible reviews, but I give it a B+.

It stars Annette Benning as a New England (it was filmed in Massachusetts) illustrator, Claire, who begins to have visions of a missing child in dreams.  She also begins having a psychic tie to a child serial killer, Vivienne Thompson, who was the abductor and killer of her daughter and who killed many other children. 

Doctors diagnose Claire with psychosis brought on by the abduction and death of her child after a suicide attempt, of course.  She is then committed to a mental institution with padded cells and everything, which is bullcrap, because a mental hospital never keeps anyone beyond 3 weeks unless they are going to kill somebody and they don't use padded rooms or strightjackets anymore, but anyway...this is fantasy...because its the movies and the movies make for an allowance of the fantastical :).  Anyway, what would you do if you were a mom.  That's right, you would escape and go get that mo fo before he kills again!!!


Despite Robert Downey Jr. being at his peak of effed upness, this film is definitely a winner, even if Mr. Downey was not, at the time.  I think playing a psycho when he was all effed up actually gave the film some kick.  He wears these blue contacts and has this drug induced blankness behind the eyes a mental health patient would have if they were being heavily medicated and locked in a padded room when they used to exsist and I'm sure they do in certain cases such as in prisons for the criminally insane since these people are never going to be released back in to society, generally, but
don't quote me on that.


The way this film is shot and the plot twists are unique.  I can only compare it to a mixture of A Nightmare on Elm Street stripped of comedy, spliced with Gothika and The Lovely Bones.  It kept me on the edge of my seat and kept me entertained!  Annette Benning is a kickass actress and does a bang up job of presumed psycho and anamalistic mom who is going to hunt a mo fo!  I was creeped out!!!

 

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