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May 7, 2013

Movie Review: The Experiment (2012)


Apparently being British does NOT automatically add an air of sophistication to any project. Their low budget horror is just as shitty as ours (mostly) is.

The Experiment is about a shady organization that is conducting some kind of experiment on the unsuspecting public. Through vague newspaper ads, this company lures in folks desperate for money. The only way they get paid is to take a drug that's designed to heighten female sexuality. Okay so maybe the ads are specific in their demographic but not much else. The company is only interested in finding the 'right' candidate.

Cue our main character (whose name I've forgotten because, honestly, I don't give a shit) who has just lost her job as an exotic dancer. For some reason her husband goes to her work to watch her dance and then gets jealous when men pay any attention to her. Huh? After a huge fight, of his accusations and she accusing him of not turning away the attentions of another dancer, she's fired. And a new divorcee.


She answers the ad and before she hears back, there are strangers in her home setting up hidden cameras all over her apartment while she's out shopping. After a few days of observation, the company authorizes the next phase. An interviewer arrives at her home, goes through some routine questions (in which she tells some truths, some lies), gives her a medical exam in her living room, and then the drug trial can begin.

After the first does, she mostly fills nauseous and dizzy, promptly passing out. Now I don't know about you but I think I'd bow out of the trial at this point. But our girl is pretty desperate for money so she continues. The second dose gets her hot and bothered where she strips naked then blacks out and can't remember what happened. She keeps dosing as her libido increases. We discover she has lots of naughty lingerie and will gyrate around alone or in the face of the initial interviewer (he always seems to be there to ask questions or just observe).

Our lusty candidate's psyche increasingly crumbles until she finally kills some random stranger after he somehow gets into her apartment and rapes her.

The End.

What. The. Hell.

Technically, that end wasn't the end. During the credits, the overlord of the shady corporation gets on the phone with the interviewer who explains our gal Friday has been hallucinating, suffering delusions, and then tried to commit suicide. So maybe she was raped, maybe not. Did she kill someone? Who knows? The boss man thinks they've finally found the right person for more trials and again authorizes the next phase of the experiment.

Seriously. What. The. Hell.

First let me say that this movie begins with a naked girl showering. She then has a 30 second phone conversation with her mum then gyrates for her husband for 10 minutes. I'm not exaggerating. Head over to the strip club and there's more gyrating. She argues with her husband and the other dancer is gyrating. She takes drugs and what's that? Right, more gyrating! Now I know for some guys....who are we kidding? All guys (straight ones, anyway) would have been happy with this movie. Little dialogue, lots of grinding hips and rubbing titties. But for the rest of us who don't have to share brain capacity with our genitals, one word comes to mind: BORED.

I can't comment too much on the acting because there wasn't a lot of it going on. Just gyrating and stripper cam and psychedelic acid trip cam and evil corporation CEO voice overs (we never see his face, just his pinky ring or cheap suit). Good news is that means the writers didn't have to work too hard. Bad news is that they didn't really work hard on writing a decent story, either.

Again, the sound was awful. I watched the entire movie with the remote in my hand so I could turn the speaking parts up and the sound effects down. The really bad part was when there were sounds effects over the dialogue. For some reason the producers thought a low buzzing noise was perfect to create atmosphere. All it did was make the lava lamp and Captain Malcolm Reynolds Stunt Pistol Replica on top of the speaker rattle and shake almost to the point of shattering. It also freaked out my one dog that had to leave the room whenever the noise began.

The only redeeming part of this movie is that it's only an hour long.

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