Pathology is a 2008 crime-horror film directed by Marc Schölermann, written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, and starring Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Weston, Alyssa Milano, and Lauren Lee Smith.
Ted Grey, a talented medical student, joins one of the nations most prestigious Pathology programs. He quickly becomes entangled with a group of his colleagues who participate in a morbid and deadly competition. The group of residents challenge each other to commit perfect murders, using their knowledge of human anatomy and medical expertise to outwit the authorities. As Ted becomes more deeply involved in this disturbing game, he must grapple with his own ethical boundaries and the increasingly dangerous consequences of their actions.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Hospital: The residents use an abandoned basement level of the hospital to conduct autopsies on the corpses of the others' victims to try and determine how they were killed. They then use the incinerator in the basement to get rid of the bodies.
- Autopsy Snack Time: Griff cements his status as a Jerkass by wandering through autopsy room eating a sandwich and making smartass comments while his fellow interns are doing things like cutting open a cadaver's rib cage.
- Body-Count Competition: Although it has less to do with quantity and more to do with "quality" (the competitors must try to find out how the others killed their recent victims).
- Bungled Suicide: The first person Ted kills is a man who shot his wife and children, exection style and then shot himself once in the throat and twice in the stomach. Despite this, he survived and is in the hospital in the ICU.
- Chekhov's Gun: The crack pipe the doctors smoke before conducting the autopsies on their victims. This is seen often enough that it just becomes part of the doctors' ritual. Then Ted fills the autopsy room with gas which explodes when they light the pipe, killing all of them except Gallo.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Juliette and Ted murder the Fat Bastard by forcing him to inhale air at -75°F. Juliette then pounds on his chest and shatters his lungs.
- Dead Guy Puppet: The film opens with a group of interns staging a 'conversation' between a pair of corpses on the dissection tables.
- Deadly Doctor: A group of residents in prestigious pathology residency program entertains itself with a secret after-hours game at the morgue of who can commit the perfect undetectable murder using their knowledge of medicine and forensic pathology.
- Detective Mole: Several times members of the group perform the official autopsies on their victims, allowing them to easily disguise the real cause of death.
- Disposable Sex Worker: When Jake finally snaps after learning Ted and Juliette are sleeping together, his first act is to hire three prostitutes and murder them in a brutal fashion—with none of the finesse of the group's usual virtually undetectable methods of killing—and invite Ted over to view the bodies.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: Both Juliette (Lauren Lee Smith) and Gwen (Alyssa Milano) are shown naked on autopsy tables. And it is a plot point that both of them have been murdered in ways that did not leave any marks on their bodies.
- Fat Bastard: The man murdered by Juliette and Ted is only identified in the credits as 'Fat Bastard'. However, given Juliette's story about all of the awful things he did is a lie, how much of a bastard he really is remains unknown.
- Furnace Body Disposal: The residents use the incinerator in the abandoned basement level of the hospital to dispose of the bodies of their victims.
- I'm Going to Hell for This: The opening scene (consisting of some doctors making corpses 'talk' to each other) ends on this line.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Juliette is turned on by murder and frequently has sex immediately after killing someone. She also enjoys rough sex and does such acts as cutting her tongue with a scalpel immediately before kissing Ted. Jake is also shown to like violent sex, including having Juliette stick acupuncture needles in his chest and rake her hand over while they are screwing.
- Mad Doctor: All of the doctors involved in the murder game display gross indifference to the sanctity of human life, but, by the end, the leader Dr. Jake Gallo has gone completely psychotic.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: After murdering Fat Bastard, Ted and Juliette have sex in his living room, with his corpse only a few feet away from them.
- No Name Given: The man murdered by Juliette and Ted is only identified in the credits as 'Fat Bastard'.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Ted impresses Gallo by working out Gallo's latest victim had been poisoned with nitric acid, then stabbed 17 times while still alive before having a bullet put in his head to mask the cause of death.
- One-Word Title
- Pater Familicide: The first person Ted kills is a man who shot his wife and children, execution style and then shot himself once in the throat and twice in the stomach. Despite this, he survived and is in the hospital in the ICU.
- The Perfect Crime: Dr. Jake Gallo brings Ted to a secluded wing of the hospital, where he and four other indulge in their after-hours, extra-curricular activities...finding ways to commit the perfect murder.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Ted attempts to quit the murder club after learning that many of the killings have not be Vigilante Executions as he was led to believe but rather innocent people murdered for sport. Even though Ted can't go to the police because of his own involvement, Jake does not let him quit and tells him that he has enough evidence to be able to frame him for all the murders.
- Serial Killer: Dr. Jake Gallo and other pathology residents each kill multiple people in their quest to come up with the perfect murder.
- Sickbed Slaying: The first person Ted murders is a Bungled Suicide on life support in the ICU.
- Tainted Tobacco: Griff murders a hitchhiker by giving him a poisoned cigarette.
- Tongue Trauma: Juliette enjoys rough sex and does such acts as cutting her tongue with a scalpel immediately before kissing Ted.
- Vigilante Execution: Gallo initially frames the murders the group are committing as this and some of them undoubtedly are, such as the family exterminator Ted kills in the hospital. However, when Ted catches several members of the group in lies, he realizes that what initially seemed like vigilante killings are, in reality, mostly innocent people murdered for sport.
