Patrick: Evil Awakens (2013)

Mark Hartley's operatic, deliciously over the top remake of Richard Franklin's 1978 Australian horror film about a bed-bound telepathic teenager, who affects the lives of those in the hospital in which he is a patient, premiered around the UK last year as part of the FrightFest all-nighter (we saw it in Bristol). It's finally getting a UK DVD release on 11th August. The more observant amongst you (actually that's probably all of you - I don't think sleepy people visit this site) will have noticed that the picture opposite is for the US Blu-ray. That's partly because the UK DVD cover still seems to be in mock-up form, but also because the version we have here at House of Mortal Cinema is the US Blu-ray. Sadly it's locked to Region A and there doesn't seem to be a UK Blu forthcoming, so if you haven't got yourself a multi-region player yet (and you're probably in the minority if you come here often) then here's another excuse to do so.
      PATRICK the remake follows the plot of PATRICK the original pretty closely, and even reproduces some of the murders. It's a pretty good updating, and I'd go so far as to say that the first hour or so is superb if you fancy a gloriously blood-and-thunder treatment of this kind of story. The setting is a gloomy old hospital in the middle of nowhere. Almost everyone boasts Australian accents and cars with UK registration plates. Mad doctor Charles Dance (who doesn't speak Australian) has filled the hospital with patients in a persistent vegetative state. He doesn't seem to have that high a grant to keep the place going as it's so dark the only money he spends on electricity must go on that ECT machine he uses frequently on one very special patient. 
      Exactly why he's shooting poor old Patrick full of drugs and regularly zapping his brain is, in the best horror movie tradition, never really explained. Nurse Sharni Vinson (from Adam Wingard's YOU'RE NEXT) gets a job at the hospital and forms a special bond with needy, psychotic, mother-figure obsessed Patrick, not that she realises this when she first puts her hand down his underpants. Soon she finds all the men around her are cutting themselves, burning themselves, and driving themselves off cliffs as Patrick embarks on the kind of wooing programme that would leave most stalkers slack-jawed in admiration. 

      PATRICK all goes off the rails a bit towards the end but it's actually a very good low-budget remake of a film that was always fun but was never the classic some claim it to be. Director Mark Hartley has a fine eye indeed for some splendid over the top imagery (Vinson's screaming mouth reflected in a shard of broken mirror, and some of the most dramatic camera angles I think I have ever seen just to show someone walking into a house) and the performances are, on the whole, spot on for this kind of thing. I can admit to a preference for Susan Penhaligon as the object of Patrick's attentions but Charles Dance is just superb as the loony doctor. Also of note is the score which is easily Pino Donaggio's best work in years and pleasingly Herrmanesque. The CD is available. Extras on the Blu-ray (which looks lovely) consist of a number of cast and crew interviews. It's not known if the UK DVD will have any extras.

PATRICK: EVIL AWAKENS is being released in the UK by House DVD on 11th August 2014. The Region A Blu-ray is already out.