The Dead Center

For pleasing pre-Halloween viewing, you could do a whole lot worse than The Dead Center. Just don't expect too many nightmares afterward.

There's a lot of excellent atmospherics here that are more unsettling than the actual violence, which in turn is all the more effective for largely being kept just off-screen.

Makes hospitals seem even scarier than they already are.

Director/writer Billy Senese didn't have a ton of money to work with but "The Dead Center" wisely eschews gore and special effects in favor of setting a dark, malevolent mood.

The film is in tune with the need to remain lucid and empathetic while in the maw of human extremity.

[An] effective low-key chiller...

This is a horror film - in the sense of horrific - through and through, a grim mystery which grows ever and ever nastier.

As riveting as it is fresh it's a slow and dreadful burn that, despite its detrimentally short run-time, manages to be one of the more intriguing, effective indie thrillers as of recent memory.

Mediocrely entertaining and repetitive in the procedures, The Dead Center lacks guts and never coheres into something special.

[Billy Senese's] second feature feels exceptionally authentic - no trace of medical soap operatics here - and is well played by a roster of newcomers, allowing it to build to a genuinely impressive clinical crescendo.