Editorials
6 of the Scariest Hospitals, Asylums, and Sanitariums in Horror
It’s obvious why some recurring horror tropes are so popular if you really think about why they exist in the first place. For instance, Final Girls are more common than Final Guys because society tends to view women as being more vulnerable, and most modern movie monsters are allegories for grief because the fear of death is one of the only truly universal fears that can be marketed towards all cultures.
However, out of all these familiar concepts, one of my favorite genre clichés has to be the good old creepy hospital. This trope also happens to make a lot of sense, as some of the most emotionally intense moments of our lives occur within these clinical settings. That’s why storytellers often force their characters to confront extreme situations from the confines of a spooky hospital.
In honor of all the eerie asylums, sanitariums, and suspicious wellness clinics that have graced cinema screens over the past century or so, here’s six of the scariest hospitals in horror movies.
To keep the list varied, it includes both psychiatric and general hospitals so long as they’re suitably scary. Readers should also keep in mind that I’ll be judging these locations based on their own horrific merits rather than the overall quality of the movies they came from. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite cinematic hospitals if you think I missed a particularly scary one.
With that out of the way, onto the list:
6. Georgetown University Hospital – The Exorcist III (1990)
The first of several real institutions on this list, the Georgetown University Hospital was depicted as a far more sinister place than its real-world counterpart in William Peter Blatty’s underrated adaptation of his own 1983 novel Legion. Not only is the Exorcist III version of the hospital shown to be a deathtrap where any maniacal killer can simply waltz in and murder the orderlies, but it was also home to Pazuzu’s latest undead host – and that’s not even mentioning how eerily empty the place feels.
Of course, the real reason that Georgetown University makes it onto the list is the fact that it’s the setting for one of the best jump scares of all time, with this iconic moment guaranteeing that this particular movie hospital will live on in our nightmares for years to come.
5. Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital – Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
Found footage movies are at their best when attempting to translate real-world scares to the big screen, so it makes sense that South Korean filmmaker Jung Bum-shik would choose to set his debut horror feature inside Gwangju-si’s infamous abandoned hospital.
While filming mostly took place inside an abandoned Busan High School that was meticulously dressed up in order to look like Gonjiam, this wasn’t enough to keep the then-owner of the real psychiatric hospital from attempting to sue the filmmakers for ruining his chances at selling the supposedly haunted building.
4. The Unnamed Hospital – Infection (2004)
Part of the exclusive club of Japanese filmmakers who helped to popularize J-Horror in the West, Masayuki Ochiai is a master of turning everyday locations into nightmarish hellscapes. 2004’s Infection (Kansen in the original Japanese) is a great example of this, with the film’s take on an underfunded hospital feeling simultaneously grimy and overly sterile.
While the flick’s bizarre combination of trippy mind-games and exaggerated body horror likely won’t appeal to everyone, there’s no denying that the memorable setting itself here is more than enough to justify the price of admission.
3. Brookhaven Hospital – Silent Hill (2006)
Hardcore fans will likely be annoyed with how the movie renamed the first game’s Alchemilla Hospital to Brookhaven due to Christophe Gans’ clear preference for Silent Hill 2, but the fact remains that the whole hospital sequence is one of the terrifying highlights of this divisive video game adaptation.
The hellish design of the otherworld makes Rose’s journey through Alessa’s lair feel like a perilous trek across the poor girl’s damaged mind, and I love how Gans included the clever detail of our protagonist having to memorize a map in order to make her way through these dark corridors – much like players do when experiencing the original game.
2. Collingwood Psychiatric – Grave Encounters (2011)
Shot in Canada’s real-life Riverview Hospital, Grave Encounters’ Collingwood Hospital is one of the freakiest locations on this list simply because the space itself appears to be alive and hungry. Through clever use of special effects trickery, the Vicious Brothers engage in prescient displays of liminal horror as the building shifts its layout in order to keep our protagonists trapped inside indefinitely.
From temporal shenanigans to architectural mind-games that would make the Navidson House blush, there’s a reason why Grave Encounters is still a fan favorite among found footage enthusiasts, and that reason is its bonkers setting!
1. Danvers State Hospital – Session 9 (2001)
Brad Anderson’s Session 9 is a miracle of a film for a multitude of reasons, but one of the flick’s greatest qualities is its impeccable use of mood and atmosphere to frighten viewers instead of relying on traditional scares. And while a huge part of that is due to Anderson’s masterful eye for lo-fi composition as well as the surprisingly freaky script, I think it’s safe to say that the movie simply would not work as well if it had been filmed anywhere else.
You see, Danvers State Hospital has something of a reputation among historians and storytellers alike, with the location serving as the original inspiration for Lovecraft’s Arkham Asylum as well as being the first medical institute to conduct frontal lobe lobotomies on its patients. That’s why this particular hospital takes the number one spot, as it remains just as scary in fiction as it is in real life.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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