PLOT: After a pregnancy ends in tragedy, a young couple seeks help from a fertility specialist at a remote institute. Soon it becomes clear that the doctor is up to something sinister.
REVIEW: When I watch the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, the parts that creep me out the most aren’t the ones involving Satan or the Antichrist. They’re the ones that focus on Rosemary consuming the mysterious tannis root and experiencing severe stomach pains during her pregnancy. I have a feeling that Hamza Zaman was similarly disturbed by those moments in Rosemary’s Baby, because his feature writing and directing debut The Institute is basically a play on that same idea.
Ignacyo Matynia and Victorya Brandart star in The Institute as a young couple named Danny and Marie, which is close enough to Donny and Marie that I couldn’t help but think about “A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock ‘N Roll” whenever someone referred to them as “Danny and Marie”. They were all set to have a child, but the pregnancy ended in tragedy that left Marie unable to conceive again. So they seek help from fertility specialist Doctor Arthur Lands (Mark Lobene), who has set up the Lands Institute of Reproductive Science in a very secluded area. This place is not only a “world classic clinic” and “holistic wellness center”, but also a wilderness sanctuary.
At the titular institute, Danny and Marie are treated alongside two other couples; Jarred Harper and Louisa Bradshaw as Steve and Mel, and Claire McClain and Joy Donze as Izzy and Blu. They’re put through a series of tests and provided with a constant stream of blended drinks; Brazilian restoratives, cocktails of herbs and roots. This has the pleasant side effect of intense horniness and heightened sexual sensations, leading to some scenes reminiscent of something you might catch on Cinemax late at night. Including an orgy. But Danny sees through the good times and knows there’s something off about Lands and his treatments.
This is a horror movie, so of course Lands is up to something sinister. But toward the end of the film, there were some twists and turns that I did not see coming, which was appreciated. That definitely gave my enjoyment of the film a boost.
The Institute is a weird movie. The idea at the core of the story, which was basically lifted from Rosemary’s Baby, is very interesting. A couple being treated at a sinister fertility clinic is a great concept for a horror movie, and the story is intriguing for the most part. The movie held my attention throughout. But this flick also gets extremely goofy at times. There are scenes where viewers are sure to be laughing at The Institute rather than going along with it. The very last shot of the movie is going to have people laughing at how terrible and silly something looks, and that’s not the best note to end on for a movie that wasn’t intended to be a comedy.
But maybe it’s fitting, because the very first scene of The Institute also features some special effects that look so bad, some viewers will be asking, “What did I just get myself into?” Thankfully, the movie isn’t packed with poor effects, but they do pop up here and there. There are bad CGI effects, and there are unconvincing green screen effects – first to provide the background during a car ride, and later even inside the Lands Institute, where it appears that the laboratory set didn’t actually exist.
Zaman clearly had a small budget to work with, and I commend him for doing what it took to bring his story to the screen. The set-up is ideal for a low budget first feature, as the movie just focuses on a small amount of characters in one location for most of the running time. But some of these things were too ambitious, and the effects used to bring them to life didn’t work very well.
The Institute doesn’t quite work as a whole. It’s not terrible, it’s worth a watch if you’re ready to forgive some shoddy effects and see an engaging idea get fumbled. But if you have no time for near misses and only want to watch something that’s really good, this is not what the doctor ordered.
Gravitas Ventures is releasing The Institute on multiple VOD platforms, satellite and cable networks and on Blu-Ray\DVD at select retailers on March 22.