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Two pals volunteer for pharmaceutical testing to make a quick buck, but what they get is more than that for which they had bargained.
Starring Travis Van Winkle, John Bregar, Tricia Helfer, Mircea Monroe, Eric Roberts
Written by David Nahmodan
Produced by David S Ward, Brandon Nutt, Chris Chesser, Karen Glasser
Duration 100 minutes
One of the best books about becoming a filmmaker the spit-and-polish way is Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew. Written primarily about the production of the Texan director’s 1991 feature debut EL MARIACHI, it’s a timeless account of perseverance, creativity and self-belief.
Part of the book concerns the ever-resourceful Rodriguez’s efforts to fund his ambitions. One of the things he tries is volunteering to be a medical test subject: locked away in a facility with other ‘inmates’ trying out new drugs in exchange for cash upon release.
He clearly got through unscathed and with the funds he needed, and so partly owes his Hollywood career to those months spent taking random tablets and describing the effects to people in white coats with clipboards, all while trying not to think too much about ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.
I wonder, though. Have there been any long-term side effects? Will it be like the Flower Power generation’s acid flashbacks, or ’90s ravers wondering if all those pills bought from dodgy characters in nightclubs are responsible for rising levels of depression – or whatever’s waiting down the line for today's yoof after sucking down all those capsules of their ‘hippy crack’?
Only time – and maybe Rodriguez himself, in a follow-up book? – will tell, but the experience certainly stayed with the director long enough for him to turn it into a semi-autobiographical movie, 2019’s RED 11. Before that – but surely, surely inspired by the same thing – came THE LAST EXPERIMENT in 2012.
The film focuses on not one but two volunteers, a pair of college buddies played by Travis Van Winkle and John Bregar. Travis VW is the stud, who can barely walk onto campus without an ADR’d coed remarking, "Hey, handsome". His only concern going in is that nothing will end up going in him anally as part of the program, something he asks about three times (the lady doth protest too much?). Meanwhile, John B plays the sensible one, who actually knows who the pharmaceutical company behind it all is and questions the purpose of the testing.
But, hey – they agree that if they can make a cool $3,000 each during their winter break, then it’s worth taking the risk.
On their first day, a long-term and long-haired inmate bursts into the pair's shared room to give them a tour of the facility, with added exposition. His arms are a cheese grater of pock marks, his performance is turned up to ‘irritatingly manic’, his accent is supposed to be British or possibly Australian, it’s never clarified. And soon he’s introducing our boys to a rogue’s gallery of other guinea pigs, whose diversity of gender, age and race betray a casting director who either did a really good job, or no job at all.
The score and the camerawork suggest a tone that's going for ominous, but the interaction between the two pals seems lifted from a direct-to-streaming AMERICAN PIE spin-off. Their unwitty banter sometimes gets so guileless that it takes a leap into the bizarre. On their first night, they indulge in this bedtime exchange:
"Dude, that blonde
chick in the canteen was totally checking me out."
"Dude, is sex all
you think about?"
"Yeah dude, isn't
it for you?"
"... Well, yeah.
Yeah, it is."
[Both go to bed
without another word.]
Before it can completely morph into DUDE, WHERE’S MY NEXT INJECTION?, we move into the next day and the subtitle "Dose One". The movie proceeds from there, with medicine being administered and montages of the inmates being forced to describe their bowel movements, not livening up until an elderly patient freaks out and runs down the hall screaming. We then get hallucinations of bugs on food, nightmares of skin peeling off, wounds that seem to self-heal, more bugs turning up. "Something is not right here. Something is fucked up," Travis observes sagely.
THE LAST EXPERIMENT was clearly filmed on a micro budget. This is not in itself an issue, but more than the extra dollars, it could have done with an injection (ha!) of ideas and a firmer focus. Shit starts to get weird, yes, but it never coalesces into sustained tension or a real sense of mystery. When the truth does come out, it's pretty underwhelming.
The movie mostly just kind of ticks along, which is probably quite an accurate depiction of how the days trudge by for the individuals involved during one of these scenarios. But to make it worth watching a bunch of other people going through it, we the audience need something more to hold our interest than a few thrown-in thriller elements and Eric Roberts popping by for the final 10 minutes.
Like, say, how does a nice cheque delivered to our house when the end credits roll round? Whether we decide to put it towards making a movie or not would, of course, be our own business.
Two stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? The film ends with the lab getting burnt
down by a SWAT team, yet has an ambiguous ‘but is it really over?’ coda. So ...
maybe?
What would a movie called THE FIRST
EXPERIMENT be about? According to UNESCO, "In all textbooks of the western world, the Italian
physicist Galileo Galilee (1564–1642) is presented as the father of [the
modern] scientific method." Could be he experimented with combining gelato
flavours or something?
Previously: LAST ACTION HERO
Next time: THE LAST WITCH HUNTER
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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