Review: ‘Double Blind’ offers cutting commentary on pharmaceutical companies

We all must sleep. Whether four hours a night or a solid eight, it’s a function we all must perform to survive. For those who might suffer from insomnia, you know the damage it can do to your mind – stay awake long enough, you’ll experience visual and auditory hallucinations. In Ian Hunt-Duffy’s Double Blind, the filmmaker explores the effects of sleeplessness and how it can seriously drive someone insane.

With nowhere else to go, Claire (Millie Brady) signs up for an experimental new drug trial. It’s a five-day stint inside a medical facility, where she meets a group of like-minded individuals – including Amir (Akshay Kumar), Ray (Diarmuid Noyes), and Alison (Abby Fitz) – looking for an easy payout. Dr. Burke (Pollyanna McIntosh) promises the trial is easy sailing but warns there might be side effects in taking the drug. She advises them to immediately notify her if they experience sleeplessness and other symptoms attributed to the new pill.

Doses start small and are expected to increase until 85 mg is reached by the week’s end. Things take a dark turn, however, when brain scans indicate severe swelling, which leads to the group suffering from sleeplessness. Despite her pleas, Dr. Burke’s bosses mandate increased dosages. As a result, the trial becomes about how long they can stay awake rather than what the drug was originally intended to do.

As the days bleed into one another, the group struggles to stay awake and quickly learns that if they fall asleep, they die a horrible death. As each member slowly succumbs to Mr. Sandman, the others look on as their fellow test subjects convulse with blood spewing from their eye sockets. It’s a gruesome, terribly cruel fate, but one from which they can no longer escape. When the facility goes on lockdown, they have 24 hours before the doors will reopen and must somehow find a way out and stay awake while doing it.

Double Blind arrives as one of the year’s biggest surprises. Hunt-Duffy performs magic behind the camera lens and sucks you into his world. Polished camera work, courtesy of the director of photography Narayan Van Maele, gives the picture an appropriately sterile feeling to match the environment. But some tricks burst through the gloss to further elevate the film – one standout moment occurs when a character witnesses their own death after stepping outside their body. Such moments gives the film real vision, style, and tone.

With a script written by Darach McGarrigle, the director helps craft pointed commentary on the medical and pharmaceutical companies, hammering home the message about the dangers of clinical trials and how corporations care more about their bottom line than human beings. One-location horror is always a gamble, but Hunt-Duffy and his creative team hit a home run with a feature that grabs your throat and won’t let go. Double Blind might not reinvent the wheel, per se, but it does allow the audience to get lost for 90 minutes.

Double Blind is out now on VOD.

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