The Dead Center

Writer/director Billy Senese finds ambitious ways to recalibrate formula scares with this slow-burning indie creeper. Pronounced dead, a John Doe suicide victim (Jeremy Childs) suddenly wakes up in a morgue and starts wandering through the hospital in a catatonic state. As puzzled medical examiner Edward Graham (Bill Feehely) searches the building, psychiatrist Daniel Forrester (played by Primer's Shane Carruth) comes across the confused "cadaver" and senses something sinister is afoot. Has the mystery patient really brought something terrible back from the Other Side, which means anyone in close proximity dies? Concerned with the possible mental illness experience as much as the mundane horror of it all, Senese's trump card is ensuring the humanity of his subtle psychodrama remains dead centre. His second feature (after 2014 debut A Frankenstein Story) feels exceptionally authentic - no trace of medical soap operatics here - and is well played by a roster of newcomers, allowing it to build to a genuinely impressive clinical crescendo.