Even under the best of circumstances, hospitals are typically an uncomfortable place to be. The sterile environment, the smell of formaldehyde or cheap lemon air fresheners, and the associations with medicine and trauma can be a little overstimulating. Suffice it to say, it’s not an environment people want to willingly stay in for very long. Unfortunately for Jonathan Rhys Meyers, he’s going to find himself involuntarily committed to a hospital he can’t leave in Paramount’s latest psychological thriller movie, Disquiet.
Directed by Michael Winnick, notable for directing the films Malicious, The Better Half, and the contemporary Steven Seagal film Code of Honor, Disquiet is still a while away from officially releasing. However, in the meantime, we can at least break down the accompanying trailer for an idea of what might lay in wait. Featuring trippy visuals, mind-bending situations, and a Groundhog Day-esque scenario of reappearing in the same place over and over, Disquiet’s trailer makes hospitals the scariest they’ve ever been.
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A Car Accident Turns Sinister
Paramount
An overhead shot of a metropolitan city precedes Sam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) entering his car. He’s told to not text and drive before he answers a call from work, just before he’s T-boned by a gigantic pick-up truck. It’d be comedic if what happened next wasn’t so disturbing.
Sam wakes up in a dimly lit hospital room, oxygen being fed into his nostrils through a stiff tube and a loose bandage nursing his forehead. If you’ve seen The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later, you probably know what’s coming next. Confused, panicked, and dazed, he sprints up from the bed, ripping out his medical implements and shouting for assistance. Already, something seems very wrong. There’s not a soul to be seen or heard, prompting Sam to access the elevator. The camera cuts away from him towards the end of the hall.
A figure in a medical gown, shoulders hunched like a rabid animal, starts to scream and give chase. Sam barely evades the figure in the safety of the elevator, before we cut to a woman undergoing what looks to be a routine surgery. As she undergoes anesthesia, however, the masked surgeons turn into faceless monstrosities, the holes in their head where their eyes and mouth were being replaced by crudely-made fleshy slits. It’s a pretty disturbing effect. She screams in terror, prompting Sam to come to her aid, armed with a metal IV stand.
Things get weird: the two surgeons disappear, now replaced by a pair of women with blood-soaked gauze loosely wrapped around their bodies. They stand motionless, staring at Sam as the woman from before is given a chance to escape.
Who Is Running the Hospital?
Sam states the obvious, “We’re going to have to figure this out,” before we get what might be a flashback of his accident. In a visually-interesting shot, we see that Sam’s recollection of the crash is visually muddled: a pair of actors representing both an EMT and a police officer “flicker” back and forth, the same way a failing light bulb would. As Sam lies in the hospital with more medical equipment than before, possibly shortly after his admittance, a woman with a wedding band pats his chest.
It should be noted that the rest of the trailer is going to follow a similar format of showcasing imagery with little surrounding context. It’s a welcome surprise, compared to other trailers that essentially tell the film’s story beat for beat. There’s a genuine sense of anticipation for how these monstrous creatures and this purgatory-like hospital fit together, though it comes with the risk of the film showing all its cards up front with nothing else to fall back on. A delicate balance needs to be formed. 2022’s Smile was able to do something like that, so hopefully Disquiet will be the same.
Sam is apprehended shortly after by a humongous hospital attendant, who threatens Sam before his face morphs into a similar slit-face visage from before. Over the next few scenes, we get a glimpse at a handful of other patients and staff: a nurse, a patient in plain clothes, what may or may not be a security guard armed with a pistol, and doctors in lab coats. Sam makes himself into an impromptu leader by encouraging everyone to work together, though in-fighting will likely take place. You can’t have a guy with a gun that doesn’t attempt to take control at some point. It’s not a knock against Disquiet, but it’s something that we can safely expect to happen.
A Variety of Patients Live in the Hospital
Some more disturbing visuals conclude Disquiet’s trailer: a bandaged child raises his hand to the sky, possibly guiding the group of patients to safety, emaciated figures crawl along the ceiling in a purplish, hellish light, bodies in a morgue all sit-up in perfect unison, and before Sam is hauled away by the same hulking attendant from before, a clawed hand covered in slicked, knotted flesh grasps Sam’s wrist from a stairwell.
Disquiet almost comes off as throwing just about everything it can at the audience, promising a variety of scares and haunting visuals that’ll likely make for an intriguing viewing experience. Let’s just hope that these different parts all fit together in a way that makes sense.
Disquiet will have a limited theatrical release alongside digital and VOD on February 10.
