Indie favorite makes return to screen in creepy thriller
Fans of Shane Carruth, the Texas software engineer turned director/actor/composer who made the stunningly original indie sciencefiction film “Primer” in 2004, haven’t had much to get them excited lately. He appeared in the film “Swiss Army Man” and the TV series “The Girlfriend Experience,” but “Upstream Color,” his last movie as a director, came out six years ago.
Well, Carruth is back — sort of. He’s not the director of the creepy, lowbudget, indie horror film “The Dead Center,” but he stars in it and coproduces, so it’s almost as good as the real thing.
He plays Daniel Forrester, a doctor in the psychiatric wing of a major hospital. His days are difficult as he finds the patients’ needs getting ground against the wall of medical bureaucracy in the form of his boss, Sarah Grey (Joorna Jagannathan, the mom in “The Night Of”). But things really turn unpleasant when a strange, catatonic John Doe patient (Jeremy Childs) turns up in an empty bed. When Daniel finally gets John to open up, the patient tells a story too incredible to believe: He’s at war with an evil entity that is trying to force its way into our world through his body.
John has tried to kill himself to stop the possession, but he gets reanimated. Meanwhile, separately, medical examiner Ed Graham (Bill Feehely) is investigating just what happened to John Doe’s body once it left the morgue.
Obviously, directorwriter Billy Senese didn’t have a ton of money to work with, but “The Dead Center” wisely eschews gore and special effects in favor of setting a dark, malevolent mood.
Welcome back, Shane. Now, you need to get behind the camera again.