Review: Pathology (2008) *

Reservoir Pathologists

The MPAA inadvertently provides the most compelling reason to see Pathology, rating it R “for disturbing and perverse behavior throughout, including violence, gruesome images, strong sexual content, nudity, drug use and language.” This is a selling point to some movie viewers (including this one, I admit) and I’m sure the filmmakers rejoiced when the rating came down, but don’t be fooled. Though it promises some sick and twisted exploitational fun, this film shows up at the pathology lab dead on arrival.

It opens with a quote from the Hippocratic Oath, outlining the ethics with which physicians promise to practice medicine. This is the last hint of sobriety or moral gravity in the film and it’s really just a set up for irony as the first scene shows some faceless medical residents in a morgue giggling over their reenactment of the deli scene from When Harry Met Sally using corpses. It’s one of a number of moments that are intended to be shocking and edgy but which fall embarrassingly short.

Milo Ventimiglia (TV’s Heroes) is a top med-school graduate who shows us how serious and dedicated he is by leaving his sexy fiancé Alyssa Milano behind to takes up residence at a prestigious pathology program in Philadelphia. There he quickly butts heads with the top resident (Michael Weston playing a variation on the creep he played so memorably in a guest spot on HBO’s Six Feet Under) and his minions. As the two alphas seek to prove who is best, Ventimiglia is drawn into a sick game the residents play where one of them orchestrates a murder (ostensibly of a child molester or some other criminal low life) while the others try to determine how it was done during a meth-fueled autopsy/orgy that features plenty of forensic gore and girl on girl kissing. Is the double meaning of the title subtle enough for you?

If Pathology is supposed to be a glimpse into the darkness of the human soul, it’s a dismal failure. Ventimiglia is incapable of the nuance required of either moral outrage or ambiguity. Instead he delivers a one-note performance of low-wattage intensity befitting his TV origins. One minute he’s a humorless and brooding up-and-coming young doctor and the next he’s a humorless and brooding young murderer. Either way, his expression is the same. Witnessing him jump the moral tracks and jeopardize his seemingly boundless future is neither logical nor horrifying.

Lacking any kind of moral or intellectual component, the script from Crank writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor has one card left to play: shock value as entertainment. Whether it’s the meth orgy autopsies, or a scene where Weston slips on the blood of the three whores he’s just eviscerated, or the scene where one resident murders the father who supposedly molested her and then proceeds to have vigorous, rapidly-edited sex in front of the still-warm corpse, Pathology wants you to think it’s crazy-edgy. It isn’t. All of these scenes sound stronger on paper than they are in reality. This is a tepid, ugly and gloomy film with Ventimiglia’s bland performance compounded by a dismal production design featuring a curiously desaturated and steel-gray Los Angeles acting as a stand-in for Philadelphia.

Neither shocking nor titillating, Pathology commits the unpardonable sin of any exploitation picture: it bores you to death.

Pathology. USA 2008. Directed by Marc Schoelermann. Written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Cinematography by Ekkehart Pollack. Music score composed by Johannes Kobilke and Robb Williamson. Starring Milo Ventimiglia, Alyssa Milano, Lauren Lee Smith, Michael Weston and John de Lancie. 1 hour 33 minutes. Rated R for disturbing and perverse behavior throughout, including violence, gruesome images, strong sexual content, nudity, drug use and language. 1 star (out of 5)

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