Kaushik Ganguly’s Drishtikone (picture left) starring Prosenjit and Rituparna Sengupta — ably paced and romantically intricate, and with plenty of product placement — takes us into the murky world of organ trafficking and dubious medical practices. The medical thriller as a genre has often explored the dangerous limits to which medical science and technology can be pushed as a result of reckless human ambition and overreaching. Generous doses of suspense along with tricky moral questions also invariably form a part of this mix. Here are nine films made in the new millennium that have approached the genre in new and intriguing ways.  

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS (2002)

In this immigrant story of hard work, dreams and survival, the viewer’s sympathies from the outset are firmly on the side of, as one character puts it, “the people you do not see”. The medical mystery in this Stephen Frears film surfaces when a member of staff at a London hotel finds a healthy human heart stuck in the lavatory in one of the rooms. These two narrative threads merge seamlessly with each character ending up in a desperate and seemingly hopeless fix. There is the much sought-after freedom on offer but some illegal and forcible transplants in makeshift operation theatres have to be performed first.

JOHN Q (2002)

A transplant story with a heart. And that too an enlarged one that John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington at his most righteous, if you can believe that) will go to any limit to have replaced. John Q is what happens when Hollywood descends on a genre and decides to make it its own. It has all the essentials — a happy family unit struck by sudden misfortune, the inevitable bureaucratic resistance that it must navigate, the desperate common man who decides to take matters into his own hands, and wins hearts and creates necessary drama while at it. This gripping and wholesome medical drama, directed by Nick Cassavetes, has inspired quite a few remakes. The Sanjay Dutt-starrer Tathastu (2006) is one such. 

SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)

Yet another product of the holy Scorsese-DiCaprio union, Shutter Island opens with much foreboding as two US marshals land on the eponymous island which is home to Ashecliffe, a notorious mental institution for the criminally insane. What starts off as an investigation about a missing patient soon turns into an increasingly perplexing tale full of devious government conspiracies, mysterious children and raging arsonists. And beneath it all lurks the threat of psychotropic drugs and terrifying brain experiments that are conducted atop a lonely lighthouse. Dealing less with medicine per se than with why and how its need may arise, this film is a masterclass on how to create atmosphere and overlay it with dread and pathos in equal measure. 

CONTAGION (2011)

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion stands apart from the rest of the films on this list. There are no nefarious activities or corrupt doctors or unnatural experiments happening here. The ‘germ’ of its medical mystery, which soon assumes apocalyptic proportions and threatens to destroy the world’s population in a matter of months, is ultimately traced back to perhaps the most trivial and harmless act possible. Widespread paranoia is what it results in, the one thing that probably spreads as fast as the virus in this superbly-paced, star-heavy medical disaster film. 

ANTIVIRAL (2012)

Antiviral, for a while at least, could pass off as an episode of Black Mirror. A man appears at the front desk of a pristine, hyper-sanitised, white office where an efficient-looking woman in impeccable corporate attire asks him to wait his turn. In this dystopian world, the office is obviously a marker of the commodification of some human attribute that is sure to blow our minds in true Black Mirror style. And it does. Diseases from celebrities are sold here. Blacks, whites and reds form the visual palette in this stylistically adept but deeply indulgent and somewhat uneven film from Brandon Cronenberg. A love for body horror clearly runs in the Cronenberg family.

AMERICAN MARY (2012)

Lurid, pulpy and unapologetic, this is ‘slasher’ taken to a whole new level. It is also a somewhat unconventional take on the rape-revenge genre. The Soska twins, Jen and Sylvia, who have been outspoken about their love of horror and all things strange and who make a striking appearance in the film as German goths with distinct tastes, showcase their leading lady — the Mary of the title — who with her surgical skills quite literally has her work cut out for her in the film. Obsessions over body image, modifications and fetishism are at the centre of American Mary which, like Antiviral, is not for the faint-hearted.  

FRANKENWEENIE (2012)

The reason behind including this stop-motion-animation film here, decidedly one of the lesser members of the Tim Burton canon, is to encourage a relook at the Frankenstein myth, arguably the world’s first medical thriller. Mary Shelley’s horror classic about the ambitious young scientist who creates a near-human turned 200 this year and has been adapted, explored and interpreted for the screen several times. Among recent retellings, the Kenneth Branagh-directed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) with Robert De Niro playing Victor/Branagh’s sutured nemesis with alternating misery and vengefulness is worth a watch.     

SIDE EFFECTS (2013)

In this tale of a fast escalating battle of wits between a patient and her psychiatrist, there are sex and lies. And at least one videotape. This is the second Steven Soderbergh film on this list and assuredly one of the most accomplished treatments of the genre in recent years. While the drama develops around the question of whether or not a prescribed psychiatric drug ultimately resulted in the committing of a crime, the film also points to the vast and under-explored possibilities of the human mind and the things it is capable of with or without the aid of drugs.

FLATLINERS (2017)

A remake of the 1990 film starring the likes of Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland and William Baldwin, this film’s dramatic premise is similar to that of any worthy slasher film — a group of precocious young people embark on a project that from the outset sounds like a terrible idea. Here, medical students start experimenting with death, pushing their bodies to slip in and out of life, and soon unleash a series of events that seem entirely and predictably beyond their control. Medical ambitions unite with paranormal reckonings in this somewhat needless 21st-century update by Niels Arden Oplev of Joel Schumacher’s more entertaining original.

Add a 10th film to the list and tell t2@abp.in