Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: March 14, 2014
Rating: PG?
Director: Mark Hartley
Kathy (Sharni Vinson, "Bait," "You're Next") accepts a job working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. Though the nights are long, she loves having the chance to escape from her former life. As she tells her newest friend, she just ended a bad relationship and wants the chance to move on without him standing in the shadows. Not long after she begins her new job, she meets Patrick.
Patrick is a patient living in a coma with supposedly no awareness of what happens around him. The more time that she spends working in the hospital, the more she becomes fascinated with her patient. One night, she discovers that he can hear her and respond to her questions. Let's skip over the part where she begins sliding her hands down his pants, shall we? Kathy does whatever it takes to help Patrick, even going against the orders of the head doctor. She quickly learns that forming a relationship with Patrick was a bad idea when he begins interacting with her and disrupting her personal life.
Let's get this out of the way right upfront, I didn't like Patrick. I've never seen the original and sorry, but I didn't even know this was a remake until a few days ago. I saw a trailer for it on another movie, thought it looked interesting, and when I realized that Vinson, who is my new favorite horror movie actress was in it, I mentally added it to my wish list. Now that I've seen it, I don't get what the fuss is about.
Patrick plays like a few different films combined into one. The dark settings, shadows bouncing off the walls, and desolate setting makes you think that it's set in a previous era. The nurses even wear old-fashioned uniforms that no hospital in the world would make them wear today. It's not until you see cell phones and computers that you realize this is set in the modern world.
The movie then seems to jump back and forth between an atmospheric ghost story to a mad scientist film to a love story gone wrong. It tries to heighten the tension a few times, but the results were so bad that I just shook my head and laughed. At one point, Patrick somehow learns how to control electrical devices and begins sending Kathy threatening text messages. Really?
It doesn't help that the story gives her two different love interests, a new man she meets and her previous boyfriend. Of course things go badly for her new love interest, but her old guy is there to help her pick up the pieces. Suddenly it doesn't matter that she moved and changed jobs to get away from him, now he's a good guy again. Ugh. I watched it once and thankfully, I don't need to watch Patrick again.
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