Macabre...ish Horror Review: The Purgation

 

 

The Purgation, 2015. Four kids who go to the abandoned asylum with the hopes of making a scary movie there. It used to be a popular hangout place for teenagers until one of them attacked his girlfriend with a broken bottle, almost decapitating her. 

 

Upon finding the burned out ruins, the kids find a basement door and go inside and it’s perfect for their movie. Turns out this area is the remaining chapel of the former sanitarium. The kids are spooked as they experience hallucinations of past patients and a nun and flee the asylum.

 

Fast forward and Iris is an adult and she’s back in town with her coworker, Jacob,  hoping to return to the asylum for a new project and visiting old friends. Edie who’s taking care of her brother these days, Derek, who now needs full time care, never recovered from their visit to the asylum.

 

Next is Marline, who also suffers her own symptoms from that same ill fated day and is also in the care of her mother. Explaining that she no longer feels any pain, she blinds herself in order to stop the hallucinations.

 

And now that Iris has been back to that place, she is deteriorating, her memory is bad and her reality seems to be altering by the minute. And now, she can’t find Jacob. No sign of him at all, there’s no record of him ever being at the hotel and no one recalls ever seeing him.

 

All the while, Iris’ hallucinations are getting a lot worse and she believes she has to stop the nun to keep from going insane. While in the asylum, one final time, the past overlaps with the present as memories of the first time inside, with her friends come flooding back. She finally understands the truth. And what it all means but the full horror of it comes to late. 

 

This movie has the feel of Nightmare on Elm St. meets The Sixth Sense. This is a low budget indie with a good concept. The whole movie,  I never knew where it was going and then I immediately rewatched it after that ending. It’s one of those!! At first, I thought the story had some unnecessary story points but after that ending, I realized those moments were highlighting the truth. 

 

Some blood, gore, some torture but not a gore fest. Creepy. The effects aren’t great but this movie is about the story and the story’s pretty good. 

 

 

Thanks so much for visiting! For more I invited Elaine Chu on to my podcast, Macabre...ish Cults, Classics & Horrors Podcast and it was a great long conversation! It is in 3 easy to consume parts...

 

1. Behind The Scenes with Filmmaker, Elaine Chu

2. Feature Sacrifices & Diversity in Film

 

3. Coming Soon!