Eli is a 2019 horror-thriller about a gravely ill young boy who moves into a house turned hospital where he undergoes a series of shady treatments by an even shadier doctor and her team of nurse.
Eli Miller (Charlie Shotwell) is allergic to the world. After developing a life-threatening auto-immune disorder in his early childhood if Eli spends even just a few minutes outside without any protective layers his skin blisters and burns, and his throat tightens, leaving him gasping and wheezing for air. The 10-year-old has spent his days encapsulated in a literal bubble, effectively putting a sledgehammer to his parents’ hope that he could be an ordinary boy.
Distraught over his debilitating condition, Eli’s parents, Rose (Kelly Reilly) and Paul (Max Martini) give in to their desperation to bring their son relief. They take Eli to Dr. Isabella Horn (Lili Taylor) an immunologist known for her revolutionary treatments and her impressive track record for curing patients afflicted with conditions like Eli. Nearly depleting their bank accounts to cover the costs of the three-stage treatment, Rose and Paul accompany Eli to Dr. Horn’s house-turned-hospital, a once-abandoned manor house that Dr. Horn sterilized and equipped with state of the art technology and equipment. However, the gaunt and hollow-eyed ghosts prowling the hallways and stirring up a racket of bangs, thunks, and creaks after sundown come free of charge.
It’s obvious from the get go, even before the unhappy haunts begin to terrorize Eli, that the hospital, enshrouded in a veil of fog, with its ashen exterior and antiquated, careworn Haunting of Hill House-esque interior is going to be a place of real horror, not recuperation and healing. The paranormal activity escalates as Eli is subject to brutal surgeries. Phantoms appear in the mirrors, shadowy figures stalk Eli’s every move and even in the security of his “bedroom” unseen hands carve threats –or are they…warnings?– into the wood paneling. Or is it all in his head? Is it a hallucinatory bad trip stemming from the drugs flooding his bloodstream in each round of treatment?
Brace yourself for graphic depictions of body horror and medical horror. The prick of large needles, the grinding whine of drills carving into bone, and the raw screams tearing out of the throat of the panic-stricken young Eli, fighting against the binds wrapped around his arms and legs with everything he’s got make for a series of disturbing and painfully hard to watch scenes.
Kelly Reilly’s Rose, a sensitive and religious gentle soul of a woman leaves a lasting impression, Lili Taylor’s Dr. Horn is uncanny and as chilly as an ice cube, but it’s Eli’s character that really steals the show. Charlie Shotwell’s performance as Eli is harrowing. We can practically feel the searing pain his body is subject to and his rampant anxiety and panic to get away. To get away fast. If he continues to take on roles in films like Eli there’s no doubt that Shotwell will set himself on the track to becoming a rising star in modern-day horror films.
Although not overly ambitious with its plot, there’s no unnecessary padding or overly drawn out dramatics to drag the movie down. Eli is an eerie and entertaining 90-minutes that unfurls via a balanced fusion of conventional jump scares, psychological mind trips, and connect-the-dots exposition. Be that as it may, it’s the who da thunk it curveball ending that’ll make or break Eli for many viewers. The final twenty minutes is a rush of fire and fury that culminates in director Ciarán Foy escorting his feature film debut to stand right front and center in the ranks of the most polarizing horror films of 2019.