Inoperable

Inoperable

Inoperable is about a woman named Amy who wakes up in a deserted hospital. She soon learns that a strong hurricane is approaching that has awakened evil forces inside the hospital and she must escape the building before the storm passes or she'll be stuck there forever. The opening sequence is a long, quiet introduction to the main character, Amy (Danielle Harris), waking up in a largely empty hospital and unaware of what is going on. This sequence has the feel of the TV show Lost, as if it takes place in a hospital operated by The Others. It's a solid opening full of mystery and intrigue. I could sense that bad things were coming and it immediately had my attention. Unfortunately, the film seems to plateau pretty early on and it never really finds a way to push the intrigue of the the story beyond what is presented in the first 15 -20 minutes. Amy spends the majority of the film running around the hospital halls and asking a lot of questions trying to figure out what's going on. As she slowly gets the answers to her questions she also struggles to figure out who to trust as she meets fellow patients and doctors along the way. With time and location shifts that jump from Amy in one place and then another and the never ending maze of the hospital, the film feels like it's running around in circles and being held together by a fairly thin story line. It's a shame with a lead as charismatic as Danielle Harris, the story can't offer her more to do. Amid all of this, Amy encounters a handful of seemingly evil experimental procedures, bloody surgeries and sloppy lobotomies that play out like run of the mill, insane asylum/evil hospital fare. On the plus side, these scenes feature a lot of fantastic special effects and a good amount of gore. Between the time jumps and location shifts mentioned before and the generic evil experiments at the hospital, the broken time continuum the characters are stuck in doesn't offer many interesting moments and the film is left with a disappointing, paint by numbers feel. It instead relies on rehashed ideas and plot points that we've seen before, like the aforementioned Lost and last year's Happy Death Day. I won't give away any spoilers but I will say that while the film overall is very underwhelming and feels like something that's been done better a hundred times before, it enters eye-rolling territory with it's head shaking ending. I love seeing Danielle Harris on screen, especially in a lead role. But she deserves much better than this and unfortunately Inoperable just isn't worth recommending.