I was intrigued by this, partly because of my love of Victorian horror set in old asylums and partly because of the excellent cast. Anything with Caine and Kingsley has to be pretty darn good (and great to see them paired up again after their wonderful comedy 'Without a Clue' from 1986!!)
Newgate (Jim Sturgess) is a new employee at a strange mental hospital called Stonehurst and becomes attracted to one of the patients Eliza Graves whom he witnessed in a class displaying so called 'female hysteria' at his university. The trouble is, Eliza is in the hospital for severely maiming her ex-husband, and no one is sure of her mental state. There are also a number of deranged patients downstairs in the basement who are all apparently nutty as a fruitcake, and Newgate has no idea how to handle them. The one person he must be able to trust to help him is the asylum doctor Dr Silas Lamb (Kingsley) who seems desperate to convince Newgate that the old methods such as shock treatment and lobotomies must be performed on the patients. But how does he know that the doctor is really all he seems?
I genuinely found this a chilling movie, and the more I think about it, the more I believe it was pretty excellently made. I truly love films which question everything you have begun to feel comfortable accepting, and this couldn't be more true here. You really don't know who to trust and who is genuine, right up until the last scene. Added to which, being directed by Brad Andrerson (a la American Horror Story) was an added bonus.
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