Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Dark Floors’

Written by Scott Edwards

Hospitals are very interesting places to visit, especially on the regular. There are the good things that happen inside as babies are being born, then there are the bad things that happen as some people spend their final days inside those sterilized walls. For the middle ground patients that are being treated there, they get to see and hear the best and worst of both worlds, but mostly catch a glimpse of all of the negative things that happen there. As doctors, nurses and techs run around to save lives and to make people feel better, it is easy to forget that every patient is as important as the next.

As Ben watches his daughter Sarah enter an MRI machine, he witnesses first hand of how doctors do not seem to have her best interests in mind. Sarah complains about the machine and how much it hurts when she enters, but the doctor pays the complaint little mind. After the machine malfunctions, Ben is ready to take a different route to finding Sarah a different sort of treatment as nobody seems to listen to what she is saying. Being an autistic young girl, she is not able to say what she means, but with her father around to keep her calm, she feels much better.

Thinking that the best path of treatment for his little girl is to remove her from the hospital, Ben sneaks into her room late at night and gets her ready to leave. Being confronted by Emily, the duty nurse when he is ready to make his way into the elevator, she says that Sarah has been put on a new medication and if she misses her next dose, it could prove to be fatal. Being upset about the situation, Ben continues into the elevator with a few other people and the group makes their way down to the main floor. When a power surge hits the building, the group is trapped between the sixth and seventh floor for only a couple of minutes, but when the door opens on six, they find that the hospital has been completely abandoned. Trying to find out what is going on, security guard Rick uses the intercom system to connect with anybody, but the only voice coming out of it is his own.

Trying to investigate the floor to see what happened, the group is also looking for a way out of the building and when they are not able to open the door to the main stairwell, they start to get worried. Hearing strange things lurking around in the darkness, the tension in the group starts to mount and Jon, one of the other passengers in the elevator, tries to make a run for it. Getting back into the elevator, he is met by a creature from the lower floors that is hungry for blood. Being saved by Rick and Ben, he is not too happy with the outcome and fears that the night will only get worse. As the group pulls back together and finds an unblocked stairway to make their way downstairs, a shot is released in their direction and they are forced to abandon their plans. Wanting to find a way to escape the hospital with their lives intact, the group sees through a window that time has stopped and that they are caught in some sort of rift, but with no way to get out of it, they need to find some way to make the clock start once again before the monsters ensure they never live another minute of their normal lives.

With all of the psychological thrillers that I have been watching as of late, this one keeps popping up on my recommended lists and with it being in my collection from 2008, I figured it was time to give it a look. Having spent my fair share of time in the hospital, I was able to connect with Ben and Sarah’s situation as communication in a hospital seems to be non-existent and when things are done to a loved one without anyone being told, I can see the distrust. I really liked the intro to the lifeless hospital when the elevator doors opened, there would be nothing more frightening in a hospital than to see a floor with nobody on it. It is easy to give into your fears when entering a hospital, I still do not like doing it, even if I know what the outcome is going to be. You know what happens in them when things are going right, but if the rules change and there is someone hunting you inside, it would not be the place for many people to even try and survive. Stay Scared.

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