I struggled with this film for a variety of reasons.
First, I am a Health Science Research Specialist for the U.S. Government (so you can trust me, I'm here to help). The way in which the research was conducted on human subjects in this movie would have any Institutional Review Board spinning wildly out of control and this study would have been stopped pronto.
That said, any horror movie has to have its suspension of disbelieve, so I moved on and tried not to pay attention to the way the 'study' was being conducted. I tried.
Second, I don't have an issue with found footage films unless the found part begins creeping into "There Is No Way People Would Stand Here And Film This" land. Although the hospital scenes play a pivotal role in the film, there is just absolutely no way whatsoever that hospital staff would allow anyone to leave their cameras around to film people/patients/staff. That's because it's highly illegal to do so.
I tried with the study, but I just could not make it through the hospital scenes. So I set the movie aside for six months.
I returned to the film thinking I was overreacting. This film is highly praised and it's an original idea, I should just get over my hangups and give this one a shot.
And that's when THE SCENE happened. I will not tell you what it is but it's so crazy/original/stupefying/horrifying (you can't miss it) that I had to rewind and watch it over again and again. When I finally collected myself, my first thought was "Why wasn't the entire film that awesome?" And then the movie was over.
The best part of this movie happened in the last five minutes.
In all, if you don't work in the health care or research profession you may not notice all the inconsistencies and that-would-never-happens. You then might find the film really excellent. If you do work in those professions then perhaps just watch the ending and read about the little details later.
I really thought I would like this movie more. In fact, I'm surprised I found so many things I couldn't get over. This is not a bad film at all - rather good horror. I just won't be coming back to it again anytime soon.
Recommended pairings: eat something French - like a fish with its head still attached (a French restaurant tried to serve this to me once. Never. Again.) Drink bourbon straight out of the bottle. Wear overalls and have some dirty gardening tools hanging around.
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