Crank N' Mank Month #8 Pathology (2008)
This entry brings Crank N’ Mank month to a close on an appropriately spooktacular note. The eighth and final entry in a month devoted to the David Fincher movie Mank and the Neveldine/Taylor Crank movies is a morbid morsel about demented docs whose dead-side manner leaves much to be desired!
It’s a nasty nugget about the kill or be killed world of medicine I call Pathology. Yes, fright-fans, the Crank boys really channeled their inner Crypt-Keeper with a fractured fable that feels like a bonus-sized Neveldine/Taylor-penned episode of Tales from the Crypt.
Given my love for the iconic HBO horror anthology and the Crank motion pictures, that’s a compliment. If I might damn Pathology with faint praise, with the exception of the Crank movies it’s easily the best thing Neveldine/Taylor have collaborated on.
That just means that it’s decidedly better than the more or less universally panned likes of Gamer, Jonah Hex and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The writing-directing pair wrote but did not direct Pathology.
Pathology finds music video veteran Marc Schölermann in the directors’ chair. His work is more understated and less deliciously, deliriously frenzied than the Crank boys at their best yet Pathology remains deliberately fucked up in the best possible way.
The edge-lord provocation begins with a protagonist so unlikable and sociopathic that he makes the hitman Jason Statham plays in the Crank movies seem as soft and cuddly as a teddy bear who is also Paul Rudd by comparison.
In Pathology, Milo Ventimiglia plays Ted Grey, a handsome, ambitious recent graduate from Harvard Law School who leverages his connections for a spot in a prestigious pathology residency program overseen by Dr. Quentin Morris (Star Trek: The Next Generation’s John De Lancie, a ubiquitous, always welcome figure in Neveldine/Taylor movies).
Doctors have a reputation for arrogance, for acting like they are better than other people because objectively speaking they are better than other people: they’re better educated, better paid and more important to society in the sense that they can save lives and heal people instead of just selling them crap they don’t need.
Pathology takes this narcissism to violent, demented extremes. Ted soon finds himself mesmerized by the dark world of rival Dr. Jake Gallo (Michael Weston, whose look and vibe are “evil Charlie Day”), a debauched hedonist with a dim view of humanity and his fellow man.
The evil doctor with the decidedly warped sense of humor introduces our protagonist to a game where interns compete to see who can commit murder in the most ingenious, undetectable fashion.
Dr. Grey is shocked and disconcertingly turned on to discover that his entire peer group consists of Patrick Bateman types for whom murder means nothing and life and death are nothing more than bad jokes.
Dr. Gallo and his similarly malevolent cohorts try to justify their crimes to the newcomer in their midst by positing the people they kill as degenerate lowlifes who do not deserve to live, whose violent deaths make the world a better place.
Alas, it turns out that in addition to being murderers, meth enthusiasts and libertines for whom the concept of fidelity means nothing, these medically-minded killers are also dishonest.
Dr. Grey is disgusted to discover that the people that he has helped murder are not anywhere as monstrous as he had been led to believe. These sick fucks are in it for the transgressive thrill of committing murder and the intellectual challenge of committing the perfect crime. They are not, in fact, interested in making the world a better place. On the contrary, they’re so nihilistic and destructive that they actively want to make the world a more brutal, fucked up place.
By the time our anti-hero/villain discovers that he has been bamboozled as to the sinister nature of the folks he’s been killing and help kill he’s far too hopelessly compromised to be able to get out cleanly.
When you have steamy sex with a colleague within a stone’s throw of the bloated, obese corpse (Larry Drake, Doctor Giggles himself) of what you have been led to believe is her abusive father after doing whippets you can’t exactly claim the moral high ground.
Dr. Grey’s life is a blur or murder, meth and degenerate sex with a fellow killer. Along with the other members of the Murder Club he has anointed himself judge, jury and executioner and killed people for the thrill and the challenge.
He lacks the distance and the scruples to realize just how desperately, hopelessly wrong and flat out evil everything he’s been doing is until he reconnects with his fiancé, who delivers the ostensibly happy news that she’ll be moving to the city to be with him ahead of schedule.
Dr. Grey is terrified that his non-evil girlfriend will discover his secret life as a meth-addicted, sexually voracious murderer and judge him harshly. The other members of the Murder Club are similarly unenthused by the prospect of an outsider discovering their seedy crimes.
It’s kill or be killed in the most literal possible sense for Dr. Grey and Dr. Gallo as they square off to see who will ultimately win the game and be the last man standing/breathing.
For me the gold standard for being twisted will always be M. Night Shyamalan. Have you even seen that guy’s movies? Do you have any idea how fucked up they are? Dude made a movie where the main character was a freaking ghost the entire time. (SPOILER)
Then he made a movie where plants and trees killed people and shit. The man is not normal! The highest praise I can consequently give any movie is that it is more twisted even than the mind of fright master M. Night Shyamalan.
So listen to me and listen to me good when I tell you that Pathology is more twisted than even the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. If you can even handle something that depraved then I heartily recommend this violent vignette.
Pathology knows exactly what kind of a movie it wants to be and commits to the nastiness of its premise with a fearlessness and utter lack of shame that I found oddly endearing.
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