Light on the dark and mysterious for most of the 1-hour 29-minute runtime, The Institute pits Marie and Danny against a creepy old dude running a fertility clinic. Having already suffered through the loss of a child and in the middle of grieving, her husband, Danny, finds an online treatment center that promises miracles. The retreat and animal sanctuary are run by Dr. Arthur Lands and a strange monotone nurse who immediately cause a suspicious eye to be thrown their way. Both seem to have been inspired by classic villains from cartoons. Dr. Lands reminded me of a taller version of something akin to Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, sans the scar on his eye and bald head.
The pair settles in fairly quickly. At The Institute, there are already a bunch of other couples after the same thing. Everyone there has been promised that the golden touch of the mysterious doctor will produce a cute little baby. They are given the health retreat speech. Everyone needs to nourish their bodies, detox their vessels, and undergo all sorts of testing from sperm counts to naked probing and restorative treatments.
Marie’s husband, Danny, almost instantly takes a dislike to the fabulous Dr. Lands, accusing him of cracking on to her while he examines her uterus with a metal instrument. Early on, though, the tonics all of the guests drink daily are taking effect, and if most of the group aren’t horny, they are asleep.
The Institute
When Danny and Marie’s exuberant romp knocks over a lamp one night, he tries to talk to Marie about the fact that he discovered a hidden camera in it. The Institute is the type of movie that likes to simply gaslight its audience from every direction. Under the doctor’s spell, when he tells her she is almost fully repaired and good as new, Marie denies anything is wrong. What’s more, when Danny finally confronts the doctor himself, there is some expertly fabulous deflection there, too.
It’s not for me, it’s for humanity!
Dr. Landis quote from The Institute movie
Fertility Clinics That Offer More
The Institute is written and directed by Hamza Zaman. Incidentally, Zaman inserts himself into the film as a yogi during a random session in the surrounding forests. It’s in the forests that we are treated to an orgy with our loved-up guests. Instead of using these scenes to undermine the “treatment” they are being given and drum up some concern about where these babies are being conceived, it instead takes a more voyeuristic approach. Dr. Landis likes to watch, and his main use for all his hidden cameras seems to be simply to watch his guests do the naked tango every night.
Heavily flogged with endless flashbacks of Mary’s worst nightmare and the grotesque vision of her baby being dragged out of her body, The Institute stumbles under the weight of uninspired performances, clunky dialogue, and unconvincing green screen effects that feel more distracting than dramatic. By the time the finale rolls around, with a giant lobster mutant baby inexplicably joining the circus, there is almost nothing left to emotionally invest in. I forced myself to hang in, desperate to learn what strange experiment had been placed inside Marie’s womb, yet the final reveal was so anticlimactic it managed to leave me even more disappointed. What could have been bizarrely entertaining ended up tedious, repetitive, and painfully unoriginal.
The Institute is rated
2.5 high-tech facilities making mutant babies out of 5
For a review of The Institute from a different angle, check out Life Between Frames’ website. If you love a medical horror that pits technology versus humans, add the following films to your watchlist: Bad Things / Sleepless Beauty.
