Antidote (2021) Review

After a medical procedure to remove her appendix goes wrong, Sharyn (Ashlynn Yennie) wakes up in an underground medical facility presided over by the sinister Dr. Hallenbach (Louis Mandylor). Unable to communicate with the outside world, Sharyn is plunged into a nightmare in which patients are selected to be hideously mutilated then healed by means of an experimental solution.

Sharyn’s early protestations and assumption that her family will already be searching for her is met with a calm, cold “No one will come looking for you” and, just in case that happens to be correct, sets about getting the hell out of Dodge. She’s not alone in feeling this way, meeting a group of other patients, each of whom have also been made to vanish into thin air for the purposes of furthering the development and testing of the healing elixir.

There seems to be no way out but no amount of seemingly endless hospital corridors and the odd bricked up exit will stop Sharyn of testing the boundaries of both the building and Hallenbach’s patience as she bypasses some rather lax security on more than one occasion to sneak around the place, gathering information that she may find useful in making a successful escape. But how has everything here stayed hidden from society for this long?

If you view this and feel that there has to be a twist on its way, you’d be right in thinking so. If you also feel you’ve got a pretty good idea of what that twist is going to be, you may be on the money as far as that goes too. I’m not the sharpest when it comes to being ahead of plots but by the time a character gets to utter the pivotal line of the tale, I was somewhat disappointed that it was exactly what I’d hoped it wasn’t.

To be fair to Antidote, it unveils its big, third act reveal as if no movie has ever pulled the rug from under its audience in that particular way and runs with it as if it with the enthusiasm of an enterprise which has forever blown the minds of both its players and audience, even if the veteran horror/thriller fans out there may be sitting there thinking “Yep, they pulled a [movie name redacted to avoid spoilers]”. It’s a serviceable option and sets up the conditions for Sharyn’s redemption or destruction but I was ready for a curveball that was never thrown.

Still, there are compensations. Yennie makes for an appealing lead who turns out to be far from the perfect wife and mother hinted at in the early going, in fact she has something of a dark past which will play into those final scenes. Mandylor, a familiar after whom you may know from many low-budget horror/thriller flicks or the My Big Fat Greek Wedding films/TV series (or both, if your tastes run to the eclectic), has fun as the unflappable, business-like Hallenbach who, with his forced bedside manner and clipped Brit accent, is so obviously set up as the villain that there just has to be something else going on.

It may also just be me being a fan of the Eagles track but for me there was also a Hotel California vibe at play. One of the protagonists mentions a particular thing that’s been going on “since 1969” and the whole “You can never leave” motto, although never specifically mentioned, looms large over the ever more gruesome ways in which the healing serum is called into action. There’s a tongue ripping, limbs are hacked off and one of the patients is regularly set on fire, all in the name of science.

Antidote is competently made and certainly has its moments, making maximum use of its limited settings (although there’s an unfortunate mark on a wall which gives away the fact that the characters are just walking past it over and over during one sequence). It also goes for an unexpected smattering of CGI come the climax that’s necessary given the need for a big finish but also perhaps slightly ill-advised given the obvious budgetary constraints. Even if the execution isn’t flawless, I applaud the guts for choosing something more ambitious visually rather than writing a less eye-catching – and, let’s face it, duller – resolution.

For all of its enthusiasm and commitment from its players, the finished product never reaches hits the heights I spent most of the movie willing it to reach. It’s efficient, it’s entertaining and it’s fleetingly, effectively nasty in places but it doesn’t stray far enough from the template of similar movies to make it all that memorable either.

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