Well, this extremely ambitious and multi-layered film would either require just a short note or a very long one to put it all on the table. I think I'll just divide it into two parts -- one being what we witness on the screen and the other being the interpretation intended by the writer, the director, and the rest of the crew -- and leave it up to you to judge it.First, though, I give it credit for being very well executed on what I imagine to have been a relatively small budget. The photography is first rate, the images crisp, the events we witness are clear, and though the sometimes hallucinatory elements may drive us nuts, there is a merciful absence of directorial razzle dazzle. It's a slow movie, made for adults, not for kids whose aesthetic apparatus has been honed on cartoons and MTV.Okay. Here's some of what we see. George is an IT kind of guy with a wife and two kids, a nice enough fellow with the pale face of a straphanger, although perhaps not the most perceptive guy around. On the day after his fortieth birthday he enters the hospital for a routine colonoscopy.If you aren't sure what a colonoscopy is, you'll find out as you get older. It's a very pleasant experience if you're a masochist. A couple of strangers have you lie on your side in an alien environment, shoot you some juice to keep you from fiddling around, spread your cheeks, and insert a flexible tube of fiber optics about two feet up into your intestines. My doc was kind enough to let me view my own intestine through the lens. It occurred to me, doped up though I was, that at that moment I was probably the only person on the planet Earth who was looking a yard up his own Arschloch. It looked like the mountains of Mars.Where was I? I feel as if I'm still coming down from that Valium analog. This movie has got me all mixed up. Ma? Is that YOU, Ma? What have they done to you? You look just like my ex wife.Anyway, as the saying goes, if something can go wrong, it will. And, man, do things go wrong for George. During the procedure there is a dull flash of light, after which things begin to get really twisted. He wakes up and is cared for by his Iranian doc and a pretty young nurse in a recovery room. That nurse, by the way, looks like she just stepped out of a skin flick with a title like "Musical Hospital Beds". Her uniform is tight, her lipstick garish, she wears high heels, and her substantial bosoms are almost falling out. The kind of nurse any normal man would dream about, and that in fact is what George is doing. But let's not get ahead of the story.In brief, George is attended by a menacing black orderly who introduces himself as "Mandingo." He develops an infection of flesh-eating bacteria on his leg, which must then be amputated. And he was confused with some other patient with a similar name and instead of a colonoscopy was subjected to a sympathectomy, which to my knowledge had only been done on dogs in psychology experiments. Strange things get stranger. The pretty nurse finally takes off her spandex uniform and boffs him one night. The guy has just had his leg chopped off, found out his daughter is a lesbian, seen another patient murdered and his wife schtupped by a swarthy man, has been given the wrong operation, and is on a morphine drip -- and he's still able to get it on with the nurse. If you had any doubts before, at that point you will realize that we are now in Wonderland and have left reality far behind. In the end, George winds up in a "persistent vegetative state." In other words, he's a vegetable. (It's not a comedy.) Right. That's what we see happening on the screen. Then, trying to make more sense of it, I listened to the audio commentary by the film makers. I'm going to condense this so I don't run out of space. Let me put it this way. If you thought any of what you saw was accidental -- eg., the doc's being Iranian or the nurse's wearing a miniskirt or even the patient's name being George -- you're probably wrong. Everything in the film is a symbol or an allusion to something else. Complacency, white guilt, the "medical-industrial complex," the Iranian situation, the fear of betrayal, it's all there somewhere. "Finnegans Wake" is a child's illustrated pop-up book by comparison. That's about as far as I want to get into it without either being paid or handed a Master's degree in film appreciation.I appreciate the awesome effort put into this production but it's not my kind of movie. I'm old enough to have seen a can of tuna fish shrink without fanfare from 7 ounces to 5 ounces, so I appreciate the imminence of death and I find movies about protracted dissolution depressing. I had a similar problem with "All That Jazz." Further, I'm fine with allegories and allusions as long as they come as surprises or nudges in a story more rooted in reality than this one. Finally, George is fundamentally decent and he suffers too much. (At times, the movie begins to look like torture porn.) Who are we to think George deserves getting it in the thorax just because he thinks he can tell what his wife is feeling just by looking in her eyes. Dumb, yes, but let him who is without sin make the first incision.

By reading through the various comments I see that people watched this movie with extremely misguided expectations. Some expected it to be some sort of medical drama (ER style maybe). Others expected some slasher horror.This is simply bad marketing, probably the studio didn't know how to market it so they planted a "horror cover" on it and tried to sucker horror fans into it. (Bad move, and the ratings show it) Otherwise, if you are going to see this movie don't expect either ER nor horror, expect a deep psychological journey through the human mind! Now for those who saw it but didn't get much out of it read on...(Warning, slight spoilers below!!!) The premise is just an artistic gimmick... how do you get to show on picture what goes on in the unconscious mind, that people aren't even aware of ? How do you get that on film ? This is one way (one way that has been done before in other forms, for example in games like Sanitarium or Silent Hill).The way the film conveys the message is through symbols (the nurses tattoo that's supposed to be the tree of life but also looks like a neuron, the roommate's speech about having no control, and about ignoring reality on a regular basis, the scene from the opening dream as a painting on the wall). To understand them you have to pay close attention to them, they are not "in your face" even if they are very visible. No narrator is there to explain what they mean and if you don't use those higher brain functions you'll miss their meaning entirely! The point of every symbol is to act as a guide, as a clue, both for the character and for you the viewer. The film is slow paced and confusing because the character is confused, in a dream-sort-of state. (think about how you feel in your dreams and compare them to the feeling of the movie... that's the point of the pacing and the point of the symbols!).I've seen some inflammatory comments about the political messages in the movie. While those are certainly there, why is it that people feel threatened by them ? Feel offended by them ? May there be some underlying unconscious fears that trigger these emotional reactions ? There certainly is, but the movie is not aimed at those in denial, at those who have no clue what their "middle class liberal fears" consist of. They will viciously hate the movie and find any numbers of flaws in it, it's normal... it's part of denial. The same denial also guides the character, from believing that nothing is wrong, to something might be wrong, to something is terribly wrong, to life-threatening. As he gets more and more out of denial and starts to realize the truth of his situation he comes closer and closer to fear, fear being symbolized by the character of Mandingo. All his fears in one shape (and Mandingo's speech at the end should have made this abundantly clear to anyone who hadn't left their IQ in the other DVD-player). It doesn't even matter if you share any fears with the character, the point is to understand how and why he symbolizes them like that.Fear is the main driver of the movie and most symbols deal with it, the other symbols deal with repressed sexuality, with repressed anger, with the immaturity of the "average Joe" who looks for authority everywhere to keep him/her safe.Conclusion: If you want a deeply thought provoking movie, this is for you! If you want a scary horror movie go visit those 3d world nations in Africa or Asia and see it for yourself, live! If you want adrenaline action, jump off a cliff (and don't worry about the parachute, you'll wake up before you hit the ground ;) ) And if you want ER drama, visit a hospital and offer to help out, or some social welfare institution as a volunteer, and you'll get all the drama you can get.Sadly this movie is far too complicated for the level of shallow thinking that most people are used to today... but for those who still chose to think it's a breath of fresh air, a little underrated masterpiece!

This was a well acted, well shot horror piece with a good script, well thought-out ideas and an all around competent cast. Visual imagery was impressive, and those concepts that seemed 'borrowed' from other films of its ilk still appeared fresh and original.The one area where this film was lacking was in pacing - using an uneven mixture of uninvolved flashbacks and main story scenes, this film at times felt like plodding cross between the Twilight Zone and the Red Shoe Diaries, as opposed to a legitimate psychological thriller.Recommendations would be for the release of a re-cut version which picks up the pacing and delivers far more of the main storyline, cutting down on the heavy load of unnecessary flashbacks and needless dialog.

When I read the plot before watching Sublime I was wondering how it could possibly make up a horror film. It did not have the ingredients needed, and I must say that when I started watching my confusion grew only stronger. What is this? Nevertheless, although the movie starts off slowly a nice soundtrack keeps it from ever getting boring. The environment is eerie and many scenes have a dreamlike setup.There is one scene that I liked in particular when the nurse takes our patient on his first journey to the closed wing of the hospital. The ambiance is unbeatable and the camera-work is just perfect - all accompanied by this creepy drum-beat.On the downside you notice this is a low budget film mostly on the sound quality of the dialog. The microphones are probably camera-mounted which makes it difficult to hear what they say at times, particularly when the actors are not directly facing the camera.Picture quality is decent, although quite noisy.I recommend Sublime to anyone who likes atypical horror. When you watch it, try to figure out what it is all about - it will make things a lot more interesting. If you have not figured it out halfway through - don't worry, you will towards the end :)