In watching these movies what I try to do is relay to you whether or not I liked it, which is really all I’m concerned about to be honest with you, and from there if applicable I’ll talk about the acting or cinematography or dialog and such. This movie ‘Subject Two’ is a movie I watched from the opening gun to the final credits and I have absolutely no feelings towards it one way or another. I didn’t particularly like the movie, but I also don’t have a dislike for it either, which makes it difficult for me discuss it with you. Most movies leave me something that I can make some weak attempt to be funny or clever with it, but not this one which left me with nothing. It’s a lot like a coffee table book in a sense in that you pick it up, look at the pretty pictures, put it down and then just walk away never to think about it again. But since I try to write a little something about every single movie I see, which I use to halfway justify the large amount of time I spend sitting on my ass in front of the television, I gotta say something.

Adam (Christian Oliver) is a troubled young man. He is a medical student who disagrees with his teachers thus causing him to fail a vital class that he needs, he is loner and has no friends, and he suffers from constant headaches. Adam does have an e-mail buddy who he has been corresponding with, a man who is very aware of Adam though Adam isn’t aware of him. This stranger makes Adam a mysterious offer offering him the ability to assist him in some highly secretive experiments he’s performing, but because of the nature of the experiments he can’t inform Adam what they entail until they actually meet. Considering Adam’s future prospects have gotten very dim he takes a bus up to what looks like the North Pole or something to meet his mysterious benefactor.

Tucked away in the snowy northern woods, Adam makes his way to cabin of Doctor Vick (Dean Stapleton), who could be the world’s most serious looking dude. Adam is

a bit concerned as Dr. Vick greets him with a flask of whiskey in his hand, and though the Doc is still a bit vague about the research he is performing in this remote location, he agrees to become his assistant. Ooops. Actually he has agreed to become his subject, his second subject as it were, for as soon as Adam agrees to participate, Dr. Vick murders him. Not cool.

Apparently Dr. Vick is running reanimation experiments on Subject Two as Adam is soon revived. What will follow will be the relationship between Adam and Dr. Vick as Dr. Vick kills Adam quite often, with Adam’s total agreement mind you, as they try to iron out the kinks of the whole reanimation process. As you might imagine a man can die only so many times before he starts to get pissed off, no matter how dedicated to science he is, which does cause some friction between Adam and the good Doctor, and then of course if there’s a Subject Two, there has to be a Subject One floating around somewhere doesn’t there?

Director Philip Chidel has created a film with ‘Subject Two’ that is built on an interesting premise and is well crafted, well acted and very solid. Chidel makes the most out of the cold and snowy atmosphere he shot his film in, giving the film a very detached and cold feel to it. Since the majority of the film is built around two men mostly in a closed in space talking to each other, it is an accomplishment that Chidel was able to keep film from being a complete and total bore, though it still wasn’t the quickest paced movie around. Both Christian Oliver and Dean Stapleton were more than capable in the roles that they were given and both actors obviously had a very clear understanding of there roles and the characters they were playing. Despite the fact that we spent a lot of quiet personal time with these two men, the character development for both them was decidedly sparse. Perhaps this was by design but it probably lent to my initial feelings about ‘Subject Two’ since I didn’t know enough about either of the men to care a heck of a lot about them, and since they were the movie, ultimately I didn’t care a heckuva lot about the movie all that much either. It’s not that I didn’t like the movie, it’s just that the movie didn’t move me enough in either direction to allow me to form any kind of concrete feelings about it.

I wish there was more that I could expound upon in relation to ‘Subject Two’, but it was a rather simple film with some big ideas floating around underneath this simplicity, it is unfortunate that I just didn’t care enough to dig deep enough to uncover and fully explore the larger concepts and theories the director attempting to present.