The Dead Center

The Dead Center is a 2018 American horror mystery thriller film written and directed by Billy Senese and starring Shane Carruth.

Plot
An unnamed adult male corpse is brought into a hospital morgue after dying in an ambulence from an apparent suicide. The man, referred to as John Doe, comes back to life and staggers out of the morgue, making his way to an adjacent hospital room where he gets into a bed and falls asleep.

Dr. Edward Graham, a medical investigator, is called to the morgue where he finds out that the body brought in the night before has mysteriously gone missing.

When nurses find John Doe in the hospital room during their rounds the next morning, he is in a catatonic state and his body is covered in scars.

Dr. Daniel Forrester, a hospital psychologist, is called to examine John Doe. He claims to the nurse (Travis) in a manner of deceptive paternalism that the catatonic John Doe is making threats of self harm in order so that Forrester may admit him under a 5150 hold.

While waiting on the phone for Detective Lawson, Graham examines John Doe's autopsy photographs, noticing a peculiarly shaped circular spiral-shaped scar in one of the images.

Back in the hospital, Travis is checking on John Doe when his face begins to twitch and he suddenly attacks Travis. Forrester is able to calm him down and inject him with a syringe of benzodiazapine.

Later that night, Travis is filling out paperwork after moving John Doe into a seclusion room. The lights begin to flicker then shut off along with the security camera feed. Travis is seen heaving and coughing heavily as he walks out of the room, exclaiming that he needs to go home for the night. As he makes his way through the parking garage, he struggles to catch his breath while experiencing flashing hallucinations of faces screaming. John Doe simultaneously experiences the same flashing hallucinations along with a ringing in his ears.

Graham goes to the motel where John Doe committed suicide and finds the same spiral pattern scored into the floor of the bath tub, as well as John Doe's driver's license, albeit drawn over with black marker.

Forrester attempts to hypnotize John Doe, which results in the ringing sound returning.

Graham goes back to the precinct and learns from the license that John Doe is Michael Clark. He also asks to see the suicide note, which reads "I am the mouth of death. None are beyond my REACH. Forgive me". He then asks to drive to Clark's family's house in order to talk to them.

In the Hospital, Forrester successfully hypnotizes Clark. In his succeptible state, Clark explains that during a housefire, he died and brought something back with him that "wanted into this world". That it was a spinning blackness now inside of him and he can't stop it. Clark attempted to kill it by cutting into himself many times, eventually causing his own death, only to come back having made it stronger. He tells Forrester that he can see its thoughts and all the horrible things it has done, that it has been here before. He says that it is attacking him and wearing him down, having made him kill someone. Before he can explain more, Clark begins to see black and returns to a state of catatonia. Afterwards, Forrester finds out that Travis is dead.

At night, Clark escapes from his room and proceeds to attack another patient, holding her head in his hands and sucking a black smoke from her mouth. In the morning, the patient is dead and her face is frozen with mouth open and dark lines trailing outwards.

Graham goes to Clark's parent's home. He finds out that Clark's wife died in the house fire and it should have killed him too, but he inexplicably managed to survive. In a room of the house, Graham finds a collage of images and articles all relating to mass death events dating back to 79 A.D. Several of the images show frozen faces with mouths wide open just as was seen in the female patient. Under one of the figures in an article is the same quote as in Clark's suicide note. Graham then proceeds to the basement to see a large black circular patch of paint inscribed upon the floor.

In the hospital, Forrester uses sodium thiopental to interrogate Clark. Clark tells him that he is beginning to dissapear due to the thing inside of him becoming stronger. He then repeatedly yells at Forrester to kill him before attempting to commit suicide by stabbing himself with a syringe. The creature inside of Clark subsequently takes over and begins the process of pulling the black smoke out of Forrester's mouth while inducing hallucinations of past victims' screaming faces. This is stopped by hospital staff and the head doctor (Dr. Grey) reprimands Forrester for his actions.

After his admonishment, Forrester attempts to attack Clark, but is stopped by orderlies and sedated. Clark attacks Grey, leaving her in the same heaving and coughing state as his previous victims. Graham frantically attempts to find Clark at the hospital, but he has already been released before he is able to apprehend him.

Forrester awakens handcuffed to a hospital bed but manages to escape and attempts to find Grey, but he is too late and she dies once he locates her. He then steals a document containing Clark's parent's address and pursues with a syringe of sedative.

Once at Clark's parent's house, Forrester sees that Clark has killed his parents as well as his children, along with Graham who had gone to the house before him. Forrester grabs a crowbar from his car then searches nearby houses which Clark has already broken into and killed the occupants of.

One house at the end of the street has its lights flicker which hints Forrester to where Clark is located. He runs into the house and attacks Clark with the crowbar, but is overpowered and begins to have the black smoke pulled from his mouth and visions of people screaming put into his mind. This continues until Forrester has a vision of the same black circular pattern as was on the basement floor, when he suddenly regains control of his senses and fights off Clark, beating him to death with the crowbar.

The last shot is of Forrester in an ambulance, nonverbal and being taken care of by an EMT. He has dark lines emanating from the corners of his mouth which slowly spread over the rest of his face.

Cast

 * Shane Carruth as Daniel Forrester
 * Poorna Jagannathan as Sarah Grey
 * Jeremy Childs as Michael Clark
 * Bill Feehely as Edward Graham
 * Andy McPhee as Ben
 * Rachel Agee as Anne
 * Jackie Welch as Donna
 * J. Thomas Bailey as Travis
 * Shelean Newman as Dr. Ross
 * Dean Hall as Detective Lawson
 * Darius Willis as Floyd

Release
The film was released on October 11, 2019. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 22, 2019.

Reception
The film has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews. Matt Fagerholm of RogerEbert.com awarded the film two and a half stars. Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine awarded the film three stars out of four.

Dennis Harvey of Variety gave the film a positive review and wrote, "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."

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter also gave the film a positive review and wrote, "Makes hospitals seem even scarier than they already are."