For reasons which I cannot begin to answer, metal hospitals have become the haunted houses of the new millennium. Over the past decade, I've seen an alarming number of horror films which are set in these locations, most of them abandoned. As someone who once worked on a psychiatric unit, I find these movies fascinating, as they are usually wildly inaccurate in their portrayal of mental health treatment. (My favorite facet which is commonly repeated in these movies is that when a hospital is closed, all of the patient records are simply left sitting out for all to see.) The newly released shocker Insanitarium joins the ranks of these unrealistic movies. But, in the end, this film doesn't care. It wants to prove that it can be as crazy as any of its characters.

Jesse Metcalfe (who played Gabriel's love interest on the first season of Desperate Housewives) stars in Insanitarium as Jack. Jack's mother has a long-standing history of mental health problems, thus Jack isn't entirely surprised when his sister, Lily (Kiele Sanchez, who played Nikki on Lost) attempts suicide. However, Jack is shocked when Lily is committed to a mental hospital and he isn't allowed to see her or communicated with her. Thus, Jack takes drastic measures to rescue his sister. He memorizes the layout of the facility and then goes on a rampage through a park. This results in his arrest and incarceration in the same place where Lily is being held. However, the hospital is nothing like what Jack had imagined. The medical director, Dr. Gianetti (Peter Stormare) is using an experimental drug called Orpheum on his patients. He believes that it will help to relieve them of their symptoms. Little does he know that it's making them even sicker. Jack makes friends with a fellow patient, Dave (Kevin Sussman) and a nurse, Nancy (Olivia Munn), and he attempts to put his rescure plan together. But, little does he know that he must not only escape with Lily, but with his own life as well!

At first glance, Insanitarium looks like a rip-off of TV's Prison Break, set in a mental hospital instead of a prison. And in the beginning, this is exactly what it is. Just like Michael Scofield on that show, Jack enters the hospital with a plan to bust out with Lily, but soon learns that life on the inside is much harder than he had thought. There are many wards and getting to Lily is not easy. On top of that, he must maintain his charade of being out of control. During this period, Insanitarium shows the same inaccuracies which plagues these insane asylum movies. Despite the fact that this hospital is huge, there are apparently only five employees and all of them work 24 hours a day. Most of the hospital is kept dark, save for the futuristic maximum security ward. In real life, patients who have been committed against their will are allowed to go before a judge -- nothing like that happens here. Yes, the first part of Insanitarium plays like any other film in the genre.

But, in the second half, the gloves suddenly come off and Insanitarium turns into a different kind of movie. I shouldn't be giving too much away to say that Dr. Gianetti's experiments go awry, and I'll leave the spoilers at that. I will go one step further and say that the inmates begin to take over the asylum. From this point, Insanitarium becomes a surprisingly graphic and violent movie. We get a bizarre sex scene, amputations, stabbings, and a multitude of mayhem. While the first half of the movie certainly wasn't a family film, nothing prepared me for the amount of gore and nastiness in the film's third act. A great deal of blood is spilled and I have to say that even I was shocked when Jack is chased by a topless crazy. (Some of the film's latter scenes reminded me of Brett Leonard's The Dead Pit.)

In some ways, Insanitarium mirrors the behavior of some of the characters. In the beginning, things are somewhat sedate and very familiar. There are some small outbursts, but nothing to distinguish itself. However, in the second half, all hell breaks loose, and suddenly the movie is out of control. I won't go as far as to say that Insanitarium is a good movie, as it has too many pitfalls, but gorehounds should be pleased with the violent final reel and those who are tired of seeing the same institution movie over and over will revel in this movies unbridled approach to the genre.