Obsidian (2020) by Erica Summers

Director: Erica Summers

Year: 2020

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:

Undertaking a clinical medical trial, a heavily scarred man joins others on a special retreat to take part in a study on an experimental new drug designed to cure skin anomalies, only for their conditions to be exacerbated by the side effects of the drug, and he must find out how to stop it.

Review:

For the most part, this was a highly underwhelming and not that impressive genre effort. Among the only likable factors here come from the film’s final half hour, where it starts to bring about some likable factors. The whole build-up to the trial supposedly being about the kind of study where this one could have been one kind of outcome, only to switch things around and get a vastly different kind of film altogether, is a great touch, where the presentation is turned from a mad doctor scenario into a creature feature out of nowhere. This reveal, including its origin and how it all connects together with their backstories, is a lot of fun and makes for a great touch when it starts to run wild on the group in graphic fashion with some great deaths as a result, all coming together for a lot to like about it.

There are a lot of issues here holding this back. The biggest drawback here is the lifeless, lethargic pace that keeps this from doing anything interesting for large stretches of the running time. The majority of this is spent on the group held up at the cabin trying to get to know each other as they undergo the series of tests and parts of the trial, which don’t make this one all that interesting for how they manage to drain the life from the film before it even starts. Meeting the series of cliched and expected patients, from the crippled individual, a series of skin rashes on obvious parts of the body, and another with a burnt patch on his face that serves as the reason for their participation in the trial, but the sense of getting to know them in this manner, where it all just drags on to no end.

That ends up leading into the other big drawback, where the trial itself makes little sense and ends up offering very little in the way of scares. The whole idea of this type of clinical trial using a group of patients on a supposedly regimented study like this one with no supervision as the doctor leaves them alone as he does other things beyond staying with them, the medication at the heart of the study is left in plain sight for the recipients to be on the honor system with how they partake in it, and there’s barely any kind of official monitoring system to keep everything in line so it all looks immensely slapdash and unprofessional. Moreover, the fact that so much of it is filled with barely scary elements for side effects, with the big one being hallucinations so it can play around with the what is real and what isn’t type of scenario for scares but none of them are that interesting or scary with how it all is presented, making for a lot of drawbacks to this one.

Overview: */5

An underwhelming if still somewhat watchable genre effort, there are some big issues here that keep this one from being anything more than a lower-tier genre effort. Give this one a shot if you’re curious about it or if you appreciate this kind of genre effort, while most others out there might want to heed caution with this one.