A few years ago I saw a movie called Madhouse that was pretty good. Not as good as another similar one called Session 9, but still a fairly entertaining horror thriller about a mental institution. I expected something of the same with The Sickhouse, but I suppose it is meant to describe an orphanage from the late 17th Century that had been infected with the Bubonic Plague. We get a brief history lesson at the beginning of the movie about how the Plague swept through London in 1665, killing 15% of the city's population in a single summer. An American archaeologist thinks she has uncovered an ancient black cult involving priests and the plague victims, but she is brushed off by a British colleague, who is indifferent to her interest despite frightening revelatory evidence that she has uncovered. Public health, she says, sometimes has to be put before archaeology.<br /><br />Enter a car full of British punks, screaming through the streets in a stolen car and filming themselves using a stolen video camera. Before long, midnight strikes, they run over someone or something in the street and come skidding to a stop, and we cut back to Anna, the American archaeologist, who has somehow stumbled upon a buried 17th Century street.<br /><br />This is where I got lost, and I stayed lost for pretty much the rest of the movie. We see clocks striking midnight a lot, so clearly something happens at midnight, but it's never really very clear what it is. And what is the deal with the buried street? I guess the Plague was so traumatic that that just paved over the old streets and built modern London on top of it? I have no idea. <br /><br />Anna is a huge problem in the movie. She claims to have this huge historical knowledge (and also does that intolerable thing late in the movie where everyone is fearful for their lives and she is frantically giving history lessons), but is astonishingly clueless about how to handle the Plague. At one point, one of the characters is supposedly infected with the plague, so they put him in a wire cage and then Anna suggests that they all go wash their hands.<br /><br />Wow, all those primitive Londoners had to do was wash their hands! Think of all the lives that could have been saved!<br /><br />The movie soon leaves any story behind and descends into a shabby special effects display that reminded me of old Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And if the special effects weren't bad enough, they also throw in the "I don't think any of this is real" thing, so none of it matters anyway. <br /><br />The story, rather than having much of anything to do with a mental institution OR the plague, is about an orphanage in which a series of terrible thing happened to five of the orphans. Surprise, there are five characters in the movie and, as Anna explains, history "seems to be repeating itself."<br /><br />No reason is given but none is needed. This is standard, 9th grade creative writing. Now we have the catalyst that introduces "death's design" which was kicked to death with three Final Destinations and provides a weak drive for the rest of the movie. <br /><br />There is a romantic moment at the very end of the film that is spectacularly out of place and dissolves immediately any character development that might have come before, and like much of the rest of the movie, it ends with a small child whispering some utter nonsense to us. We are told that the plague doctor will live on forever, "and you being a malignant host, an infant herald of doom."<br /><br />What?!?<br /><br />Well, let me give you a little chronology. The Sixth Sense - 9-year-old boy sees dead people. Ghost Town - annoyed British dentist sees dead people. The Sickhouse - American archaeologist sees dead British people. That would be really interesting if the movies were released in that order...