Medical examiner Edward Graham (Bill Feehely) has been tasked with examining a John Doe (Jeremy Childs) suicide… which would be rather routine except for the fact the body has fuckin’ disappeared… well “disappeared” is the wrong word; more like “resurrected” and wandered away… as one does.
Eventually our very confused former corpse lands himself in ye olde psychiatric hospital and under the care of Dr. Daniel Forrester (Shane Carruth)… a rather unorthodox medical professional who has raised the ire of the higher ups.
Forrester does his best to deduce Doe’s boggle (namely insane-o mood swings unmanageable by normal methods), but he naturally could never guess that this dude has gone loco because he’s now a walking impossibility… and worse yet; those that get close to Doe are beginning to die. Will Graham (who won’t let a missing corpse lie) and Forrester solve these supernatural shenanigans before the body count rises?
The Dead Center is one hell of a slow-burn sombre affair. This is a psychological thriller/drama at it’s core, but that’s not to say that the supernatural angle gets short shrift (especially in Act 3); rather things are kept as believable as possible, no matter how outre events become.
Adding to this are weighty, rock solid performances with Feehely and Carruth making for engaging and grounded protagonists, and Childs displaying a range that completely sells everything from catatonic to sympathetic, to explosively violent all in equal measure.
Also of note is how effectively the narrative (courtesy of writer/director Billy Senese) changes from deliberately paced mystery to more explosive action as the intensity of the situation ramps up considerably in the third act… with flashy, stylized visuals to boot. This simple changing of aesthetics conveyed the growing nightmare superbly without relying on a billion dollars of visual effects.
