Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #21: Patrick (2013).

Kathy Jacquard (Sharni Vinson) is an impressionable young nurse who takes a job at a remote clinic run by renegade neurologist Dr. Sebastian Roget (Charles Dance), who specialises in brutal experiments on the long-term comatose, under the supervision of Matron Cassidy (a wickedly icy Rachel Griffiths). Dr. Roget's favourite patient is Patrick (Jackson Gallagher), a young man who has been lying mute and immobile for three years after being electrocuted. In Roget's words he is now just "limp meat hanging off a comatose brain." But now, Kathy's arrival awakens desires in him and unleashes his withheld psychic powers, especially after she uncovers a shocking secret about his past. Cue the death and destruction.

Patrick is a remake of the 1978 cult Aussie shocker and while I very rarely defend remakes, for me this one (although I did see it first) fucking vacuums AND mops the floor with the original. Firstly because it's more intimate and claustrophobic, with Patrick being able to mentally use a computer and phone in some ways like cyber-harassment (in the original he just uses a typewriter), and another very gruesome death involving an elevator. Secondly, I found Roget a far more interesting character this time. In the original as played by Robert Helpmann, he's just another straitlaced surgeon, and here he's corrupt and insane from the start, although Charles Dance never makes him cartoonish. Plus, it's legitimately scary, which today is miraculous even for an ORIGINAL horror flick.

Director Mark Hartley, who previously made the documentary Not Quite Hollywood about so-called "Ozploitation" flicks including the 1978 Patrick, and writer Justin King clearly considered this a labour of love, and they hit it right out of the park. They wisely steer as clear as possible from the familiar horror devices (there are no creaky floorboards or shrieking violins here), they create cohesive and convincing character dynamics, Hartley's clarity and pacing should make your heart pound like Kathy's, and overall it even raises valid questions about modern health care. When/how does "compassionate" care become abuse? Is there room for risk-taking in medicine and if so, how much?

If you're like me, you should love Patrick. But just make sure HE doesn't love you...