Welcome to the Asylum, Population: Regret
Let’s start with the obvious—The Control Group sounds like a movie that could have been clever. A secret experiment, an abandoned asylum, a cast of college students who don’t realize they’re lab rats—it’s a horror setup with potential. But then someone decided to inject it with equal parts confusion, bad lighting, and Brad Dourif’s rent money, and what resulted was less Shutter Island and more Scooby-Doo on Bath Salts.
Directed by Peter Hurd and filmed in an actual abandoned hospital (the Fergus Falls State Hospital, which probably deserves an acting credit), this 2014 horror “mystery” is proof that sometimes method filmmaking goes too far. The movie looks like it was shot entirely with flashlights and edited on a laptop during a power outage.
It’s the kind of film that makes you wonder if the real experiment is watching how long the audience can last before their sanity gives out.
The Plot: A Mad Scientist Walks Into a Screenplay
Our hero, Jack (Ross Destiche), wakes up in a mental hospital with four other college students, all of whom appear to have been abducted from the casting call for a deodorant commercial. No one knows how they got there, why they’re there, or why the walls look like they’ve been painted with actual despair.
Enter Dr. Broward (Brad Dourif), a mad scientist in a lab coat and permanent “I used to be in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” expression. He’s running a top-secret experiment involving consciousness transfer, which, in horror movie language, means “we needed a reason for the walls to bleed.”
The students soon discover that they’ve been dosed with a mystery drug, which causes hallucinations, paranoia, and, worst of all, the urge to keep watching. They encounter ghostly figures, zombie-like creatures, and people wearing plague doctor masks that look like they were purchased from Spirit Halloween’s clearance rack.
Science Gone Wrong (And So Did the Script)
Apparently, the experiment’s goal is to “store consciousness” instead of “wiping it.” If that sentence makes sense to you, congratulations, you’ve already done more thinking than the screenwriter. The “stored consciousness” of a deranged murderer is still lurking in the hospital’s network, waiting to upload itself into someone’s brain—sort of like an evil Windows update.
Dr. Broward insists it’s all for science, but his methods suggest otherwise. His experiment involves strapping people to machines that look like they were built out of discarded microwaves, then yelling cryptic lines about “the mind beyond the mind” while blood leaks from somewhere.
If the movie were any more nonsensical, it would qualify as an experimental art installation.
The Cast: Acting in a Vacuum (Literally and Emotionally)
Ross Destiche plays Jack, the stoic hero who seems to think emoting would interfere with the lighting setup. His main talent is staring blankly at things that make no sense—which, to be fair, is the audience’s job too.
Jenna Enemy (and no, that’s not a stage name, apparently) plays Vanessa, who screams a lot, runs even more, and contributes exactly zero to the plot. Monique Candelaria, as Heather, gets one of the movie’s better death scenes, which is to say it ends her suffering early.
And then there’s Brad Dourif, the one shining clown nose in this fog of mediocrity. Dourif delivers every line with the enthusiasm of a man who knows exactly how bad the movie is but has already cashed the check. He mutters things like, “They’re all part of the experiment!” as though hoping the script will eventually make sense if he says it convincingly enough.
The rest of the cast spends their time wandering hallways, yelling each other’s names, and shining flashlights into corners where nothing happens. It’s less Paranormal Activity and more Paranormal Tedium.
The Setting: The Real Star of the Show
The Fergus Falls State Hospital is legitimately creepy, with its crumbling walls, endless corridors, and faint smell of asbestos and despair. Unfortunately, the filmmakers treat it like an overenthusiastic real estate agent showing off an open house: “Look at this hallway! Isn’t this hallway terrifying? Here’s another hallway, but this one has flickering lights!”
By the 45-minute mark, every hallway looks the same, every corner hides the same shadow, and you start rooting for the asbestos to win.
The Horror: More Confusing Than Terrifying
The Control Group wants to be scary. It has all the ingredients: a haunted asylum, psychological manipulation, and the occasional jump scare. But the execution is so uneven it feels like watching someone forget how to make a horror movie in real time.
There are ghost children, zombie test subjects, mysterious figures in cloaks, and even a spectral woman named Anne who helps Jack because apparently every horror movie requires a tragic ghost sidekick. The problem? None of it connects. It’s like five different horror subgenres were put into a blender, and someone hit “puree” until the story was unrecognizable.
Even the gore is disappointing. There’s blood, yes—but it looks like stage ketchup, and it’s often accompanied by CGI effects that belong in a 2001 screensaver.
The Dialogue: Exposition Through Suffering
The script is 90% exposition and 10% yelling. Characters constantly explain things they clearly don’t understand:
“They’re using us for experiments!”
“What kind of experiments?”
“THE KIND YOU CAN’T ESCAPE FROM!”
Thank you, Captain Obvious, now please die faster.
Every revelation only raises more questions, none of which are answered. What is “Blank Slate”? Why does Dr. Broward have an army of zombie janitors? How did anyone involved in this experiment manage to get a research grant?
The dialogue often sounds like it was written by ChatGPT after a mild concussion.
The Climax: Chaos in Search of Meaning
The final act crams in everything the previous 80 minutes forgot to do—gunfire, screaming, rebellion, ghosts, and Brad Dourif dramatically monologuing next to a skeleton hooked up to wires. There’s even a brief moment of redemption for Grant, who mutates into a half-zombie superhero long enough to help take down Broward.
Then, as quickly as it started, it ends. The survivors escape, leaving the evil doctor unconscious, and the movie just… stops. No resolution, no explanation, just a lingering sense of “Wait, that was it?”
The credits roll, and you realize that the true experiment was testing your patience.
The Message (If Any): Science = Bad, Hallways = Cheaper Than Sets
If there’s a moral to The Control Group, it’s that unethical science leads to chaos and that filming in abandoned hospitals saves a lot on production costs. It also teaches you that Brad Dourif can elevate anything, even a movie that looks like it was filmed through a used syringe.
There’s potential buried somewhere under the rubble—a faint idea about identity, morality, and what it means to be human—but it’s lost beneath layers of bad dialogue and cheap effects.
Final Diagnosis: Failed Experiment
The Control Group is what happens when you cross The X-Files with Scooby-Doo and let the Mystery Machine crash into a government lab. It wants to be psychological horror but ends up psychological torture.
The only real “control group” here is the audience—forced to endure 84 minutes of half-baked science fiction, unlit hallways, and the slow, creeping dread of realizing Brad Dourif deserves better.
★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5)
A film that proves the scariest thing about abandoned hospitals isn’t the ghosts—it’s the film students who keep shooting there. If you want to lose two hours of your life and several IQ points, The Control Group is the perfect test subject.
