The film scrutinizes the appropriateness of treatments for all the fascinating and tragic characters, and following the episodic nature of the book allows the audience to understand the fragmented nature of the mind.
With amazing performances from Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Whoopi Goldberg amongst many others, Girl, Interrupted is an incredible coming of age story full of passion and emotion.
Session 9, (2001)
When Gordon Fleming (Peter Mulan) ambitiously claims that he can remove all the asbestos from the abandoned Danvers State Hospital in only two weeks, he knows he is setting himself a hard task: With a squabbling team, a new baby and a wife to contend with the job proves even harder than he could have imagined, and when members of his team start going missing Gordon finally snaps.
Cut together with taped interviews (Sessions 1 - 9) from a previous patient of the hospital, Session 9 is a slow-burning, chilling horror that couldn’t have possibly be set anywhere other than an abandoned mental institution.
Gothika, (2003)
Turning the genre on its head, Gothika sees Dr. Miranda Gray (Halle Berry) being institutionalized into the very hospital that she was working at when she becomes the main suspect in her husband’s murder.
Gothika makes full use of all the horror conventions that we would expect from horror movies with plenty of atmospheric darkness, blood splattering all over the place that are all drawn together with a scary soundtrack and lots of screaming.
Fundamentally undermining the mental hospital that she worked for by proving that at least two of their inmates are perfectly sane, Dr. Miranda also uncovers a serial rapist who roams the hall at night, making this possibly one of the scariest hospitals of the lot.
Shutter Island is out now.