Movies
‘Double Blind’ Review – Medical Horror Delivers Potent Cocktail of Suspense and Style
With mistrust in science and healthcare being so out of hand these days, the timing of Double Blind couldn’t be better. Real-world misgivings about Big Pharma, experimental medicines, and scientific ethics fuel this Irish horror movie where human lab-rats must follow one important rule: don’t fall asleep. Otherwise they will die. The concept is improbable, but director Ian Hunt-Duffy and writer Darach McGarrigle go that extra mile when getting under people’s skin. The end product is both clever and stylish, not to mention unrelentingly suspenseful.
The movie’s titular setting — a hush-hush clinical trial where neither the participant nor the experimenter know who is receiving a certain treatment — is ideal for creating unease and terror. The seven unaware test subjects are locked away in a cold and secluded facility, then fed mysterious drugs by a small staff led by Pollyanna McIntosh’s impersonal character. One-location stories like this have an advantage over others; they imply early on that there is no escape for the characters. The sense of entrapment here is not too subtle upon first sight, yet how the movie follows through is organic.
Similar to the experiment at hand, the story’s environment is controlled; the movie’s director keeps a relatively tight leash on everything even as the clinical trial edges toward the inevitable chaos. At first Hunt-Duffy dispenses dread in small yet potent doses, thus keeping everything and everyone at a detectable but tolerable level of discomfort. Then for more fast-acting disturbances, Double Blind delivers these bracing moments of bodily harms and horrors. Concerns about the trial’s sudden shift in objective are soon viscerally validated.
Double Blind is successful at getting audiences to identify with all or most of these unlucky characters, who are being held captive by not only their physical surroundings but also harsh capitalism. The foreseeable protagonist, Claire (played by Millie Brady), had nowhere to turn after a recent fallout with a loved one. Desperate med student Amir (Akshay Kumar) was rejected by the company conducting the double-blind, and he now hopes this trial will give him a better shot at an internship. Then there are the others who simply want the money, especially once a bonus is offered to anyone who stays for the whole experiment. McGarrigle’s script paints plausible motives for everyone, although the characters’ actions and dynamics with one another are more interesting than their actual personalities.
Director of photography Narayan Van Maele’s vision for this facility-turned-fortress is largely responsible for the movie’s claustrophobic atmosphere. From a wealth of creepy corridors to the menacing minimalism of the characters’ sterile confines, Double Blind makes good use of its small locale. Everything, when angled a certain way or put under the right light, is eventually unnerving. Whenever the tense aesthetic is then paired with Die Hexen’s disquieting score, the movie reaches maximum effectiveness.
This is not a novel movie, however, Hunt-Duffy and McGarrigle’s feature debut has enough going for it that will help it stand out in the long run. The well executed and entertaining story benefits from quick pacing as well as an economical runtime. Also, the performances are, for the most part, capable. Double Blind will do little to assuage anxiety about healthcare and the drug industry, but the extra effort put into its creation makes for a worthwhile slice of medical horror.
Double Blind is out in select theaters now and will be released on Digital on February 13.
Pictured: Double Blind poster courtesy of Epic Pictures.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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