A body-bagged John Doe suddenly comes back to life on a hospital basement, where it was stored awaiting autopsy. The newly minted revenant (Jeremy Childs) shuffles upstairs and collapses on an empty bed.
When discovered, he’s taken to the psychiatric ward, where he ends up in the care of one Daniel Forrester (Shane Carruth): our protagonist. Dr. Forrester is a bit of a mess – he’s introduced waking up in a couch in his office, and is enough of a sadsack loner that the only out-of-work social interaction we see him engage in is him half-drunkenly calling up his sympathetic, preternaturally patient boss (Poorna Jagannathan) at ungodly hours in the morning to discuss a work-related incident.
He's also deeply empathetic, which serves him well when dealing with the John Doe. He manages to draw him out of a catatonic state and starts successfully treating the man (notably in an excellently staged hypnosis scene). When the patient finally opens up, he starts speaking of a darkness at his core, some sort of evil entity gathering strength to perform unspeakable acts (killing people; he just means killing people, nothing fancy.)
Dr. Forrester at first discounts these as schizophrenic delusions, but when people start dropping dead in the hospital, their corpses looking like slightly less freaky versions of Samara’s victims in The Ring, he starts getting a little nervous. OK, a lot nervous.
All of this is intercut with the point of view of the police medical examiner who was originally slated to do the autopsy on the body (Bill Freehely). Understandably miffed (a case of corpsus interruptus!), he starts investigating, following a trail of clues to the cosmic horror that lurks at the centre of the movie.
Don’t expect much out of said cosmic horror – The film does wonders with its minuscule budget as far as atmosphere and tension goes, but its supernatural menace - the titular Dead Center - ends up being disappointingly prosaic. The final act is nightmarish and effective, but not nearly as weird and/or apocalyptic as it could have... no, as it should have been after all that set-up.
The film has a very pleasing procedural feel to it, a low-level grittiness that feels well-observed, and a good sense of place. Much of the first part of the film deals with navigating bureaucracy in an underfunded hospital, and the mental patients on display here seem a little more realistic (to this non-expert) than your standard Hollywood crazy person. There is one cooky older lady that does some whimsical shit like dancing in an empty hallway, but that gets a pass because it’s there for effect. The gumshoe aspect is also pretty well done, if a bit more generic.
The character work is solid, and Carruth and Jagannathan in particular do a great job with theirs. Even if they are, respectively, a little one-note and a little underutilized.
Writer/director Billy Senese does well on both of his duties, with economical writing and clinical, precise direction; it’s a slow-paced movie by design, but it never really drags. It’s not incredibly gory, though there are a few gruesome bits, compounded by the fact that the script does not have any problem at all with killing off any of its characters at the drop of a hat. Some of the decisions – like death by scaryface montage –don’t really work out, but otherwise it manages a great sense of dread throughout.
In the end the threat lets the movie down a little, and that’s a shame. But it’s still well worth it if you’re in the market for a pretty effective, slick, low-key/low budget indie horror film.
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