10 Days in a Madhouse

The story telling was just off. Like a singer that is off pitch. It's almost as if the film was done by 2 different production company's. One with money and a budget and one that was a film school project. I wanted to like this film I really did. But the acting was so 2 dimensional it was hard to watch. The sound editing must have been done with a cassette recorder. Every ding, bang, knock was picked up and used in the sound track.

This movie could have been fantastic. Unfortunately for production, bad direction and horrible acting made a good story into a horrible movie. So disappointing. Didn't even recognize Kelly Lebrock as she has had so much plastic surgery.

I had read articles about this movie saying the most amazing things. That this was Christopher Lambert's best part in ten years and that lead actress playing Nellie Bly was being praised for her performance by Hollywood insiders. But I couldn't understand why all the user reviews I was seeing were that the film was awful. After seeing the movie I did a little bit more research and realized the articles are written by the producers themselves and contain no factual information whatsoever. The movie is horrendous. The lead actress playing Nellie is just not a good actor. She flares her nose when she's supposed to be angry and widens her eyes when she's supposed to be scared. Christopher Lambert wanders around the movie with not much to do and looking amused that he's the only known actor in the film. The rest of the cast, complete unknowns, do the best with what they're given as the script's dialogue is incredibly cheesy and unrealistic. But a good number of them give cringe-inducing results. The movie itself is a hot mess. Some shots look very professional. Others look as if someone whipped out their iphone and started filming. Even an iphone might've produced better results. About 80% of the movie looked to be shot in real locations. The other 20% is flatly in front of green screen. And it's not well-done green screen as it looks like each part of the film was pieced together little by little until something coherent came together. Don't waste your money on this garbage.

I'm not really sure how to rate this film, but feel compelled to write a review, for no other reason than to warn people what they are about to see. The plot is interesting, but the movie feels like a high-school play. While it is a very important and amazing story that needed to be told, the production is abysmal. Only a 12 million dollar budget? OK, but, better acting alone would've made all the difference. The 10 star ratings are misleading; either fake, or written by Lifetime Movie lovers. And what was with the Kelly LeBrock cameo?? Weird. (and bad) I agree with another reviewer who suggested you read the book. I plan to do that, as soon as I get the imagery from this rubbish out of my head.

I've read the reviews written before writing my own, and I'm astonished by the low ratings and the reasons for that.

I didn't know the story, didn't know (anything about) Nellie Bly. But the movie showed all it had to.

The movie might not be of the best quality, you might expect more given all the digital techniques these days. But I kind of appreciate it, because it accentuates the time these things actually did happen.

I've seen reviews which said that Christopher Lambert seemed to be there mostly to give the movie 1 known actor, and that Caroline Barry did not such a great job at playing faking a mental illness. I don't agree on both statements.

Lambert hadn't the main role, he simply had the role of the main physician. He showed a man who, I think honestly, tried to figure out how to help his patients, but got terribly confused about what's right and wrong in how to realize that. Which has been sort of "good practice" for a pretty long time in medicine...

Barry played the main role, a woman who acts being mentally ill, in a time people hardly understood what mentally ill meant. Today's psychiatrist en psychologist would definitely not fall for the show she put on. We won't either. But back than? Don't forget, it's incredibly hard to fake a mental illness with our current knowledge, back than she could very well succeed with what Barry showed us on screen. Mainly because that was what a lot of men those days would expect from a mentally ill woman.

It is precisely that, what makes this movie a very catchy story that won't let go of you until the end. As a viewer I felt the unease, the emotions, the pressure, like it was choking me.