Sublime

Plot synopsis:
The plot centers on the protagonist George Grieves (Cavanagh), who checks into the Mt. Abaddon Hospital for a routine procedure only to find horrors await him. Awakening from what was supposedly a simple colonoscopy, Grieves is told by hospital staff that due to confusion arising from similar patient names he was mistakenly given a sympathectomy to cure sweaty palms.
As the days tick by Mr. Grieves' post-operative experiences grow ever more bizarre until he finally realizes that he is caught inside a nightmare of his own creation and seems unable to escape or awaken back in the real world. He understands that something has gone wrong in his post-operative recovery which is keeping him trapped in this netherworld of manifestations of all of his worst fears but he understands neither what the problem is nor what, if anything, he can do to awaken from it.
We eventually see his condition from his family's perspective and it appears hopeless. The doctors explain that there was a complication during the colonoscopy which created an air bubble in his bloodstream that eventually reached his brain and caused so much damage that he ended up in an apparently permanent vegetative state. He's been dead to the outside world for 10 months and his family is being pressured to remove all artificial means of life support.
Meanwhile, back inside his own mind, George Grieves is in a desperate losing battle with his own manifested fears and decides that the only way out is to commit suicide in this dream-like state hoping that it will cause his real body to expire and free him from the interminable torment he's had to endure. He manages to leap from a 7th-floor window onto the concrete below, and the final shot is of his real-world body lying in an empty hospital room where it flatlines, closing its eyelids in physical death.

Tags: violence

Review:
I will admit that I did not "get" a lot of what is allegedly the films symbolism and frankly the point of the movie really didn't hit me (I kept rewinding it right before the end to hear what Jenny and George were talking about because it seemed to be related to what he does) but to me, it didn't really matter.
I initially got this movie not really expecting that great of a film; like most of you who've seen it I found it at at a video store.
The movie itself is VERY slow, so for some people who haven't got the patience to watch the movie until its ending, and are expecting the more traditional hack and slash out of this horror movie, may be disappointed.The movie is full of metaphor, which is one of the things that I *really* liked about it.
I found this movie surprisingly good and I am quite sure it is going to be seen as such for anyone with a taste for oniric quasi-Kafkian moods (understandably deemed "boring" by the usual cheap-thrill lovers) .
It is a well written dark psychological piece that apparently asks too much from the typical movie consumer (i.e. following the thematic dialogs and references in the flash-backs).I also didn't see any problems with the acting or direction -- I generally liked the whole package.
Maybe the people giving bad reviews didn't watch the film all the way through.
The answer is definitely worth the build-up.Its true its fairly slow moving to start with but the whole way through it begs for a conclusion which makes it all the more rewarding when one finally comes.If you're interested in human psychology, you will like this film..
Nevertheless I found this film generally good and interesting.A middle age successful man is shortly to go into hospital for a routine procedure but is troubled by a recurring dream.
Are these events really happening or as I interpret it: is he simply going through a nightmare and experiencing his fears etc?All the performers are excellent, the design of the film is first rate and the music is often brilliant.
The story will keep you wondering until the end on what exactly is happening in this film, and when the end does come the concept is acceptable but the events that took place during the ending seemed a little odd.Let's also bear in mind that this is Tony Krantz first film as Director, and if you ask me he pulled it off well, the direction and shots where well laid out, the editing had some creative transitions between flashbacks, and the story was quite original in a day of cheesy slasher flicks.
Check it out, and don't let it fool you from the start into thinking its going to be like so many other weak Hospital Horror films as it builds its environment.
Complete waste of two hours of my time.I was turned on to the concept feel of the movie.
the horror is underlying in the extremely good acting a nd performances of the actor, the direction is magnificent, this film is really well thought and planned that is almost unreal as realistic you can get.
After watching this movie, I wanted the wasted hour and a half of my life back.
Yes, there are elements of other horror movies as the comments in the first thread describe, but they are only amusing references of better film efforts.
It's not thought-provoking except when you think, "Why am I watching this movie?" There is no character development.
no time to look up, i thought this movie had to be top ten psychological horror ever.
after that i was on edge by the TV the whole time unwilling to move or miss another second, i don't think i'll go recommending it to any of my people because they probably don't appreciate beautiful movies like this.
So often directors leave movies too open or end them to quick making me feel that I've wasted what could have been 2 epic hours of my life but 6 years after watching this movie I am still excited and still have discussions about possibilities and meanings.
It's basically a horror story, but on a sublime level, as the title would suggest.It's about a guy that goes to a hospital for a standard simple procedure, but it ends up all but standard.It doesn't raise a lot of big questions, but it definitely asks a few important ones, and in the process makes you take a good look at your own life.The cinematography and acting is top notch all along.
But that is the only flaw i immediately saw, and come to think of it, it might even have been deliberately.It jumps a lot in the time-line, and it sort of reminded me of Memento, another absolutely great movie.The pace is a bit slow, so it might not appeal to action buffs.
No, seriously.With competent acting, not much seemed to happen as the hot nurse - and she was hot - proved not enough to deter my growing resentment as the badly handled mystery eventually began to unfold, boring my to tears in the process, before things turned incredibly nasty towards the end.I reckon that somebody watched Miike's Audition and thought, "Hey, let's do an ending like that," failing to realise how out of place it was given the lack of warning in the set-up.It's difficult to go into any further details about this bag of crap without somebody sticking a SPOILER cuss on this opinion (since I don't actually write "reviews"), but the only thing you really need to know before watching this film is this: AVOID.Or, you can listen to your gut after the terrible opening and awful dialogue of the following bedroom scene, and turn it off not even 5 minutes in.Believe me, you'd only be sparing yourself from sitting through a very bad film..
I thought this was a really thought provoking movie from the start, and it only get's better as the movie slowly moves on,, A man who just reached his 40th birthday,, has everything going for him,, job , health , family,, then he goes to a hospital for a "routine" surgery,, somehow through utter incompetence his chart got switched and he get's an unnecessary prodecure that of course he does not need..
But now he must have an operation which requires a short stay in hospital, and George's suppressed fears and phobias slowly bubble to the surface, especially after he accidentally undergoes the wrong medical procedure.Sublime is a slow burning tale of paranoia and psychological horror that gradually builds in intensity, before fizzling out shortly before the end thanks to a disappointing denouement that isn't quite as clever or as original as it likes to think it is.Throughout the movie, director Tony Krantz carefully builds an atmosphere of unease and develops a nightmarish quality that inexorably draws the viewer though the bizarre happenings.
What he discovers only disturbs him further.Up until the very end, the film is pretty good: the acting is solid, the direction innovative (with good use of inter-cutting between two time-lines), the plot turns fairly unexpected, and there are some nasty moments to make you cringe.
Unfortunately, what Krantz delivers is a rather obvious 'twist' ending that is not totally unlike Adrian Lyne's superior chiller Jacob's Ladder.Sublime therefore suffers somewhat in the originality stakes, but is still worth a watch if freaky tales are your cup of tea (and particularly if you like them loaded with symbolism and hidden meaning)..
I have watched this movie and I think i wasted my precious time of life by watching this movie actually this movie is for intellactual peoples or for doctors as it was very very hard to understand what is going on in this movie.
I didn't find any interesting thing in it and just asked my self why you watched this movie.I highly recommend not to watch this movie if you are not a doctor or intellactual..I feel story writer or director should explain their viewers about this movie before so they can understand and enjoy it.
There is no way that this movie is a horror film.
Mandingo becomes George's biggest nightmare in him thinking that his dislike of whites or WASPS, like himself, will come out in the open when he's alone with him in his hospital room.As George's mind becomes more and more paranoid it's his other major fear, besides Mandingo, of being misdiagnosed which in that case, by being true, turns out to be well founded.
It's that infection that eventually had George's leg become gangrenous and later be amputated!The way things are being played out in George's heavily sedated and confused mind he as well as us in the audience don't quite know what's real or unreal in the movie.
It's that change as well as everything else that happens after that which keeps you guessing to what's really going on in the movie.We finally get to know what's the cause of George's strange and disturbing hallucinations at the very end of the film that ends up destroying both his mind and body.
I don't see anyone complaining about the time it takes to write a movie review, or queueing in the bank, or stuck in traffic.It is a shame that people are not willing to experiment different approaches to art (and in life!).
Anyone with an IQ over 80 will know the ending, after 30 seconds of watching this movie.The story is at most poor.
and that done badly and mixed with a bit of obvious racism.The IMDb people should not force me to write 10 lines of text for a movie that only deserves one: DO NOT WATCH THIS!I mean, how can one empathize with the situation when everything is presented from the standpoint of a man on anesthetics?!
The presentation of the film as a "horror movie" is completely inaccurate; any run of the mill slasher flick has a much better plot.
There is only one word to describe this mess of a film: dumb.I rented 'Sublime' because I mistakenly expected a sophisticated horror movie.
But it would still suck big time.A movie for and of people who fear 40 more than death, a long, hard and mind-numbingly boring view into the self-absorbed narcissistic mind one imagines is the result of generations of Hollywood inbreeding.Multi-phobic of all ages might find pieces of mild entertainment in this mess.
Well, I can't say I know for sure what the writer of the movie intended to convey but I'm happy to be left with my own interpretation i.e. the character George(performed very well by Tom Cavanagh) had lot of fears which he imagined to be real(the shelves full of files, dark corridor, the black nurse etc) and finally he found a way to tackle his fears once & for all.
When I read the plot before watching Sublime I was wondering how it could possibly make up a horror film.
Director Krantz would have done well to give more screen time to this actor.Another special mention must go to Katherine Cunningham-Eves as the beautiful nurse, Zoe. You'd think she would be hired just for her looks but Cunningham-Eves is actually pretty good.
In fact, much better than the weak links, which to me were the wife and the unidimensional and uninspired performance of Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as the nightmarish Mandingo.The movie has a basic plot but is spiced by interesting concepts and a good music score to support decent camera work.Recommended for a rental if you like some of the movies referenced above..
My good notes which my stars are based for this film is that the movie continuously portraits the clean, dry as disturbing air from the hospital.
Thats actually a good reason to watch the film who gives the real senses (not like a chaotic set of E.R. or niptunik would give).
The film fails and the is actually not a big point course of the intended POVperspective from George; in the originality that gives to much references from more complex movies as 'jacob ladder' or 'the others'.
it is definitely an has-been-already-shot-movie but a believable character set and the narcotic deep hospital fear gives the rural of this 'horror' a good night-movie..
I thought this movie was gonna suck real bad, but I started to get into it just when it got too weird and touching towards the end.
This is probably the first Tom Cavanagh movie I've watched and it is not a good start, and also the Warner Brothers horror studio Raw Feed really sucks, 2001 Maniacs was kind of good, but Rest Stop and Sublime were their two first handmade films and I thought they were both horrible.
The movie did have good acting and was kind of interesting towards the end, but not even worth a rental.
That wouldn't have been a particularly bad resolution if the elements of his dream related in some meaningful way to what we know happened in his reality, but they don't.There are plenty of interesting ideas thrown into the mix in the first half of the movie - in between some aggressively blunt symbolism - which are never really addressed in any real fashion.
Add this to the forced racial jokes made by the Iranian doctor at the beginning of the movie and you can almost instantly tell what film takes about an hour too long to 'reveal' what we already know - that Mandingo is merely a manifestation of George's racist fears.
Since this aspect of his character has no relation to anything else in the plot, but Mandingo represents the sole 'villain' and the primary horror aspect of the whole movie, this whole element feels pretentious and overwrought.The characters are also left without any development - George's (apparently unjustified) fear of betrayal by his wife, his (lack of a) relationship with his brother, et cetera, are all brought up and then ignored.And finally the movie closes with George's realization that he's in a dream and decision to kill himself to end the dream and his own, real life.
In the end, this movie has nothing to say about the topics it brings up.Finally if you watch it from the "George as America" perspective that the director apparently intended, as per the special features on the disc, it's downright terrible.From that perspective, the film appears to be saying that America is victimized by black people, America is victimized by Iran, but luckily Iran is incompetent, and hot nurses love America...
This total lack of control over his own symbolism makes the message unintelligible without a running commentary, and therefore a complete failure.So we're left with a pseudo-deep movie (read: BS philosophy meets jumbled politics) that fails on every level of viewing except the least ambitious - a hospital thriller - where it manages to be "okay."Do I even need to say: Not Recommended?.
And the worst is that the movie makes no effort to show that this man in particular is racist, etc (as a matter of fact one of his close friends at the birthday party is black, so where does that leave us??) you are just supposed to know that he is a white male therefore afraid of lesbians and black people.
Reminiscent of a good TWILIGHT ZONE by way of David Lynch (it's interesting to note that director Tony Krantz produced MULHOLLAND DRIVE), this deceptively "simple" horror story manages to infuse a rich array of religious symbolism, political allegory, and moral quandaries, all without detracting from the gruesome matters at hand.In a nut shell, SUBLIME tells the story of George Grieves (Tom Cavanaugh), who checks into a hospital on his 40th birthday for a routine Colonoscopy.
This film was long, labored and pointless to the point of being inane.To spare you watching this - the story goes like this: 40 yr old white family man is admitted to hospital for routine colon inspection.
(At times, the movie begins to look like torture porn.) Who are we to think George deserves getting it in the thorax just because he thinks he can tell what his wife is feeling just by looking in her eyes.
while not a horror flick, nor an entertaining movie to watch, it has a statement and most of all it has meaning.
Not a horror movie, but worth watching....
I loved the movie rest stop which was put out by Raw Feed so I had a feeling I would like sublime as well.I was right!Besides it's catchy title I found that this movie really kept me interested.I didn't find it long or boring like some thought,but then I enjoy movies like this that start out slow and then build up.I don't get why so many people hated this film.It had some nice imagery and good effects without being too graphic and it had interesting symbolism.The movie was well acted by everyone.Thomas Cavanagh gave an excellent,convincing performance of an ordinary(but rich)family man who's fears were realized after a medical procedure went very wrong because of a mix up.I thought the black male nurse Mandingdong was a bit over the top .I didn't think George deserved to be verbally attacked so harshly and implied he's a racist.It nearly changed my opinion of the movie because I found the George character likable and not too unlike people I know.I looked past that part afterwards.
This movie did get me thinking about hospitals and how scary it would be if something like that actually happened.I have heard of mix-ups and patients getting the wrong medication and dying.There is fear before going under for an operation.
I do see why he lacked this; you wanted the white viewer identify, you guessed this fears would be the viewers fears (as most people who'll watch this movie are white and middle class) and would in turn make the viewer think about this.
As I started watching this film, it seemed like a cool movie.