Hysteria

Hysteria

Year: 1997

Runtime: 100 mins

Language: English

Director: René Daalder

HorrorThrillerScience Fiction

Patrick McGoohan reprises his role from The Prisoner, now as a psychiatrist who links asylum inmates into a mind, forcing them to share each other’s psychoses, dreams and sexuality. Director René Daalders mixes sci‑fi horror with grindhouse style, making the film a provocative look at individual vs group consciousness, power and freedom.

Hysteria (1997) – Spoiler-Free Movie Summary & Plot Overview

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In a stark, clinical asylum that feels more like a laboratory of dread, a radical scientific program seeks to knit together the minds of its patients, forging a single, collective consciousness. The film blends cold‑war sci‑fi horror with the lurid grit of grindhouse cinema, creating an atmosphere where sleek technology collides with raw, unsettling human desire. Every hallway hums with the promise—and the threat—of a society that could erase individuality in pursuit of a perfect, synchronized order.

At the heart of the experiment is Harvey Langston, a charismatic psychiatrist whose unconventional methods push the boundaries of ethics and empathy. He is joined by Myrna Malloy, a wheelchair‑bound former dancer whose lingering passion for ballet becomes a powerful and enigmatic force within the shared mental landscape. Their interactions hint at a fragile balance between control and surrender, suggesting that the very act of linking minds may amplify both the beauty and the volatility of each participant.

Meanwhile, Samuel Fry arrives with a more conventional medical mindset, drawn into the institution’s web by his concern for Veronica Bloom, a troubled patient whose fragile state challenges the limits of conventional treatment. Fry’s compassion places him at a crossroads between the alluring possibilities of the collective experiment and the lingering pull of personal connection. As the hospital’s corridors pulse with the low‑grade glow of machines and whispered psychoses, the film invites viewers to contemplate the cost of unity, the allure of shared experience, and the uneasy tension between freedom and conformity.

Last Updated: October 27, 2025 at 16:35

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