Unrest

Talk about gross anatomy… the cadavers at this made-up medical school look worse than death warmed over. One in particular, the corpse of an American woman who died in the jungles of Brazil, is grey in color, slashed and bruised, wrinkled and puckered… and buck naked.

New student Alison Blanchard (Corri English, who looks so much like Britney Spears it's distracting) is seriously distressed when she lays eyes on the moldering body. Her autopsy teammates (Jay Jablonski, Scot Davis, and Joshua Alba) are sympathetic at first, in spite of their own varying irreverent attitudes towards the deceased. Rick is the least serious of the group — when he takes his girlfriend on an after hours "tour" of the autopsy classroom, tragedy strikes.

Bad things keep happening in the lab and hospital, but when Alison reluctantly reports to the class instructor, Dr. Blackwell (Derrick O'Connor), that she feels an evil presence emanating from the mysterious woman's corpse, he dismisses it (much to his later dismay, I might add) and she is forced to get to the bottom of the situation herself. But she's not quite alone in her belief: Alison and her classmate Brian hook up, and then it's two against one — albeit one very powerful and angry spirit.

Director Jason Todd Ipson, who actually studied to become a surgeon, takes the familiar elements of the horror genre and combines them with his knowledge of the world of medical students. On these basic levels, the film works well. An unfocused script, an unneeded romantic subplot, some continuity errors and lapses in logic drag Unrest down a bit, but I still recommend it for fans of gruesome dissection, ancient curses, and spooky hospital corridors.

Unrest will be showing at the HorrorFest Film Festival (where available, nationwide, November 17-19).

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson