User Reviews

DELIRIUM is certainly a high-quality, well-made movie with excellent production values and above average acting. That having been said, I found it unsatisfying and disappointing because it's infected with lazy storytelling and exhausted, hackneyed plot elements, and there just isn't much that a high-quality production can do to freshen up old movie tropes that have been worn into ruts long ago.

As there are already many reviews at the time of this writing, I will leave the positive comments to others (probably coming from those who haven't lived long enough to have seen the same plot points a dozen times by now in other films as I have...) and simply focus on the aspects that kept me from liking it.

The vast majority of the tension and creepiness DELIRIUM manages to achieve relies all but exclusively on the vehicle of the protagonist being apparently unable to distinguish between hallucinations and reality. Even on his meds, the protagonist sees horrific visions that he has to vocally convince himself aren't really there. So here he is, rattling around in a giant, opulent mansion (in which his father committed suicide less than a week ago), seeing (and hearing) terrifying hallucinations of a giant Doberman pinscher eating his father's face, creakings and bangings and footsteps and doors opening by themselves and so on. Are these real or are these just the creations of his demented mind? The uncertainty about what's happening is supposed to be the element that gives the audience the thrills and chills in the movie.

To me, this is both just a plain copout and a perfect example of terrible writing. It's barely a half step above a story that ends with "and then he woke up and it was all a dream". Great writing, if you're twelve.

This trope allows the story to throw any old slop at the viewer without any justification, explanation or appropriate storytelling craftsmanship. If it's all in his mind and his mind is free to make up whatever it wants, any old crap is fair game. *Yawn* This old saw has been used in innumerable other movies in the very same way and for the very same reasons: cheap and easy, no thought required, five scares for a dollar. It was barely legitimate the first time it was used seventy years ago. Today it should probably be illegal. The last movie I reviewed with the very same premise, for all practical purposes, was STILL/BORN. Basically, it's as common as dirt.

Furthermore, nothing about the situational set up for the story makes sense at all, even if you try to spackle it over with 50 pounds of "willing suspension of disbelief". No patient is going to ever be released from any institution while actively hallucinating under any sort of stress; no patient is going to be released after twenty years in an institution into extreme isolation with no on-site supervision or transitional assistance; no patient is released into isolation with dual monitoring with heavy penalties for failing a monitoring regimen but for ONLY THIRTY DAYS and then be completely scot-free thereafter. And it just goes on and on and on.

I'm pretty good at squinting up my eyes and pretending through a lot of balderdash when it comes to movie entertainment, but somewhere out there is a limit and DELIRIUM goes well past it.

Garbage writing simply cannot be overcome with high production values. Even really high production values.

I felt especially bad for the protagonist because he turned in a first-rate acting job and managed to portray a very empathetic and likable character. It's a real shame it was wasted on such a fifth rate story.

For me i love those psychological thriller movies specially those that let you Wander inside the mind of someone who is having hallucinations, this movie is pretty good one and throughout the movie you seem to get lose and be confused whether what you see is actually happening or all is just inside the character's mind , at first they make you believe that it's all hallucinations as we know the main character is been into mental hospital and he taking pills, but then events that happens next , at some point u start to believe that it's not hallucinations and that's actually happening until the very end when the police arrived and he go out of the house with that girl and that girl is no longer there with him in the last scene!! So the end is bleak and we left with no answer, we as viewers we didn't know whether that actually happened or not , i like movies that confuses you and let you wonder and analyze them and look for answers

A crazed family with a penchant for brutality. What's real, what's not? Sort of ok, although the hallucinations aren't really necessary.

I stumbled across this movie in 2020, a few years after its release. I've enjoyed most everything Topher Grace has done, so I decided to give it a whirl. my original review of this movie was entirely too long, so I decided to delete the entire thing and start over in a more succinct manner. Here is the basic plot... *chatacter gets released from psychiatric hospital, *character goes home to big spooky mansion which may or may not be haunted, *guy suffers from frequent hallucinations, *character has a terrible parole officer who steals his medication, * character meets overly-attractive female grocery clerk, guys supposedly in prison the brother shows up at a nowhere, *character doesn't know if he's imagining the entire thing or not. We learn that the character and his brother had been convicted of murdering two girls in their teenage years. The older brother is serving life in prison, or may have escaped and is now living in the house... Most women would have run screaming from the home of a murderous psychopath but instead this one decides to frequently hang out at his house, alone. Now for the unimaginative twist... The brother escaped from prison and returns to the home seeking money, his little brother isn't sure whether or not he's a hallucination, the older brother then murders the parole officer and attempts to murder the attractive grocery clerk, we discover that their mother was being held hostage under the pool in a secret room by their father for the last 20 years, fight fight fight, gunshots cause the pool water to come crashing into the room, the main character and the hottie clerk escape, leaving the older brother to drown...the end. All in all this was an entertaining movie, however I felt the twist ending was particularly predictable. I don't regret watching the film, I just wish it had a more imaginative ending.

First of all, although she didn't, the Lynn character deserved to die. Some guy you don't know who is on house arrest calls you up and asks you to risk your freedom to get him ANTI-PSYCHOTIC drugs and your response is basically "You better be going somewhere with this, Mister." I wish Alex really had killed her.

Speaking of Alex, it's never explained exactly how he broke out of prison. We know there's a fire, and I guess we're supposed to believe he was clever enough to, what, leave some of his DNA on one of the charred bodies? Then there's his death in the end, where, after shooting his already close-to-death, BLIND mother, she manages to make her way through a flood and perfectly place a chain around his neck, even though she's bleeding out and he's like a foot taller than her. Nonsense.

The movie looks good, and Topher Grace does a good job in the role, but it is just too preposterous, even by horror/thriller standards. I was really hoping there was going to be another final twist that made any of this make sense but there isn't. It's just extremely disappointing.

This film was innovative, thought provoking, and brilliantly constructed. If you enjoy movies that require thought and don't spoon feed you everything you won't be disappointed. If I had to liken it to another film it would be 12 Monkeys, which was also packed with symbolism. Definitely heavily psychological and the horror element is not to be taken at all literally.

After reading multiple reviews, It seems as though disappointingly few have attempted to analyse this film as symbolic. Obviously a great deal here is not happening in the literal sense of the word, but what exactly is going on? I suspect the time in the psychiatric hospital was meant to be an actual event, as was the murder committed by his brother that he recounts midway through the movie. Whether or not he is actually residing in the house, or whether it is meant to represent a feeling of confinement I am unsure, but I would argue that the real events end with these few sub plots.

Here we have an individual battling mental illness who seems to be systematically reliving painful events from his past that he has yet to come to terms with. The shopkeeper is likely a parallel for the crush who was murdered (which would explain the absurd scene of the two talking over juice boxes). The protagonist references his belief that his father hates him, which is resolved by a scene in which he discovers a (likely imagined) video of his father stating how much he loves him. The mother "abandoning" him upon admission to the psych hospital is explained in his mind by her confinement in the basement. He states she never spoke to him again, which he seems to imagine is explained by her cut out tongue.

These delusions allow him to move past the pain the experiences caused. Even the final scene is almost a 1:1 for the murder he witnessed, but failed to stop. Except this time he intervenes and saves the girl, who then saves him from drowning at the hands of his brother, a direct reversal of the original traumatic event.

The final scene in the movie entails the police showing up and simply asking "Is this your house". He smiles and replies, "It is now." The house has represented his mind and the demons he is battling the whole time. Only after coming to terms with the events of his childhood and reimagining the traumatic event of the murder, this time as something he prevented, is he finally free. This is also indicated by him pulling the calendar with his countdown to freedom off the door, as he no longer needs it. The psychological battle has been won and the house (his own mind) is finally his.

This movie makes no sense if viewed superficially as something that is happening exactly as we see it depicted. But the trademark of many mental illnesses is belief in unbelievable things. Delusion is by definition illogial, irrational, and often terrifying. In terms of a depiction of the struggle of a haunted and unreliable mind, everything in this film fits like a glove.

There was a lot going on in this film. Was the whole thing made up in his head? Was the whole thing real? I could go either way. I guess it is open to interpretation from the viewer. Overall this was a solid film with great acting and underappreciated.

This movie had potential but ended up being pretty mediocre. I found the first half to be mostly boring but I kept on watching because I wanted to know what was real and what was not. I was also curious to learn what did the brothers do that led the main character to be institutionalized in a mental hospital. While the second half was more interesting and did answer some of the questions I had, it still left too many unanswered questions.

Here are some: CAREFUL: SPOILER ALERT!!!

1. Why did the dad kill himself? 2. If Tom wasn't hallucinating why was he seeing the dead dad and dog? 3. Who was watching through those peepholes and why? 4. Why did the father locked his wife under the pool? 5. Why did he cut off her tongue? 6. Why was there even a phone in her cell if she couldn't talk? 7. How did she survive all these years? 8. What did the brothers know when they were kids? 9. What was the interaction between all of them that led to the distraction of this once happy family? 10. What happened to the older brother that made him become a killer at a young age? 11. How did he break out of jail? 12. Why wasn't he surprised to see his mother? 13. If he knew she was there why was he surprised to learn about this secret room? 14. Why didn't he help her when he found her there (whenever that was)? 15. Why did he shoot her? 16. Why didn't Tom tried to save his mother from drowning (he couldn't have known she was dead)?

I think they spend too much time on the whole "is this all in his head" thing. Time that could have been better spent on answering these questions. Shame.

Top her Graces character was so stupid! I can't believe he took this role. He's the biggest wimp ever. Why didn't he cut his ankle bracelet? The alarm should have gone off in the hole anyway. It went off if he took one step out the door. I don't know, the whole feel of the movie was off. Should have been much better!

"Trust my brain, not my eyes". So says the persona of Tom Walker in Delirium. Walker (a rightly cast Topher Grace) loves his Fruity Pebbles, loves to sketch people, and loves his mid-90's college music. Sadly, he gets put through the ringer via Delirium with zero sympathy, solicitude, or empathy. Heck, he's like a wilted pinata that's smacked around and beaten at every turn. Eugene Levy said it best when he spouted the words, "what a week I'm having".

Anyway, Delirium contains some blood-curdling moments that actually feel genuine. It has an elaborate mansion that almost acts as a main character. Delirium deals with brute force, hallucinatory effigies, suicide, and self-infliction. Finally, Delirium heralds a decent, sort of one-man show performance by the everyman-looking Grace. Added to that, veteran actress Patricia Clarkson is effectively nasty as a kooky probation officer with schizo motives.

Released by way of Internet in the U.S., containing a bit of dry humor, and directed by Athens, Greece native Dennis Iliadis, Delirium involves Tom Walker (mentioned earlier). Walker is a medicated, mental patient with a psychotic older brother that's doing time for murder. Tom gets put on house arrest at his dead parent's abode for thirty days. If Tommy boy can survive with ankle monitor and haunted images in tote, he's home free and doesn't have to go back to the creepy institution for which he was temporarily allowed to leave from.

Delirium's premise is a little silly, a little far-fetched, kinda plot implemented, and highly unlikely. Still, the film (at times) seems hair-raising and vaguely original considering the countless other scare fests that have come before it.

In total veracity, Delirium reminded me slightly of The Shining, 1986's House, any Saw movie, and 2007's 1408. I'd recommend the flick had it not been for its downer ending that kind of lacks some real resolution. As a viewer, you experience a lot of bruises and blackening while taking in Delirium. By the time the end credits roll out, you'll wonder if it was actually worth all that effort.

In retrospect, Delirium mildly succeeds as a fun-house horror flick that eventually turns into an off the rails thriller. Yeah Delirium may have too many implications, it might be a little too mean-spirited towards its lanky protagonist, and it may possess too many icky twists. Oh well. It's at least equivalent to a two and a half star rating.