The setup is nothing particularly novel: Brilliant forensic doctors have a secret club for committing the perfect murder as an intellectual "game." (Sounds a bit like Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 "Rope" doesn't it?)
On top of this, the doctors fetishize death by performing secret nightly autopsies in an orgy fueled by sex, drugs and alcohol. The audience views this all largely from the perspective of a talented young up-and-comer, Ted Grey (Milo Ventimiglia). A presumably disillusioned humanitarian, Ted is still slowly drawn into this exclusive cult.
Even before the murdering begins, the audience is treated to plenty of stomach-wrenching autopsies.
In fact, the graphic nature of these repeated scenes does something that many contemporary mainstream horror flicks tend to skirt -- it desensitizes the viewer to excessive gore, which, considering the subgenre of horror slasher flicks, wouldn't normally be too jarring.
Unlike those films, though, "Pathology" doesn't even give the victims names. And even when the tables turn on named characters, it's hard to care since those characters never inspired much empathy anyway. The acting performances might be to blame here.
Sure, there may have been plenty of films that set the killer as the protagonist, but even the coldest, most emotionally detached films -- think "Man Bites Dog" (1993) or "American Psycho" (2000) -- still offer the victims' suffering and pain as one escape from the twisted mind of the murder, allowing us to recognize the horror of the killer's actions regardless of how charismatic he is.
But in "Pathology," the director never allows us to tap into that humanity. The only suffering actually shown on camera is that of murderers and supposed pedophiles -- and even these scenes are brief and emotionally sterile, except for the grand finale.
These talented young doctors are not vigilante champions of a moral cause -- there are no rules for their "game," and they kill anyone, regardless of crime or sin.
The entire point of the film is summed up in a scene where Ted witnesses an old woman go into cardiac arrest on a bus. When the rest of the passengers panic and crowd around her in concern, Ted nonchalantly gets up to end his ride.
Just as Ted reacted to the woman's emergency, viewers will probably watch the plot unfold in a dazed apathy.
Schoelermann and the scriptwriters, it seems, are championing an unrealistically cynical view of the world. To paraphrase Ted, it seems that the doctors' guilt stems solely from the fear of getting caught.
But it's hard to believe that we are all, at heart, emotionless killing machines kept civil only by rule of law, monstrous comic book villains without consciences. Yet as the film hides the physical consequences of murder and relegates the doctors' victims to some place off camera, it bludgeons us with this very point. The sociopathic doctors do not need to fear justice, punishment or even guilt -- only death itself at the hands of other killers.
The film aspires to be a realistic portrait of humanity, but actually it is just extremely cynical and absurdly evil.
Perhaps "Pathology" is simply an intellectual experiment that tests viewers to see if their own moral compasses can determine what is wrong with the film's twisted Hobbesian logic.
But the whole thing is too much like a piece of mean-spirited propaganda.
Technically, the film is very well made and well executed, but I still don't even know who the target audience is.
The only people who are likely to agree with or enjoy the film's message will probably never go see it, as they are too busy drowning puppies and harassing school children.
