When movies set out to present a different period, a bit of historical research can go a long way. Someone like Robert Eggers offers such verisimilitude that you feel like you were at the intended time. Others are less successful. The Institute claims to be based on true events, and, apparently human trafficking did take place at the Rosewood Institute for a number of years. The movie, however, gets many period details wrong and suffers from a labyrinthian story. Also, it is shot so dark that even with brightness at full it’s difficult to tell what’s happening much of the time. So what are these allegedly true events? Wealthy women are admitted to the fashionable institute to recover from mental stresses. At least that’s why Isabella Porter is there. Drugged by the fictional Aconite Society, she is trained to be impervious to pain, erase her identity, and believe she is fictional characters to act in plays. A strange premise.
Her brother suspects something is wrong, but under the influence of wolf’s bane, Isabella kills him. The women are repeatedly tortured and dehumanized, ultimately to be sold to the wealthiest elites of Baltimore as slaves. The true part of the true events is quite slim, and it’s never explained why Isabella is trained to believe that she’s Young Goodman Brown, and paired off with another woman as his wife Faith. Also, there are Satanists involved. With all the stops pulled out, the whole begins to sound rather silly. It’s unfortunate since there does seem to be the core of a good idea here. It needs a little less rather than more.
If all the storylines came together into a coherent whole, there might’ve been some takeaway. As it is, layers of a secret society cover other layers and when you get to the center there’s nothing there. Movies about mental institutions are difficult to pull off well, particularly when they’re based on true stories. While a wolf-bane drinking society of the uber-wealthy does sound plausible, it leaves unanswered why they want their female patients to act out stories when they could easily afford to attend plays with professional actors. ’Tis difficult to fathom. The satanic aspect is never really explained but again, I wouldn’t put it past the rich. The acting is good, from what I could see of it, except for the institute’s doctors, all of whom were woodenly portrayed. Perhaps this was intended to be a parable, or maybe a retelling of “Young Goodman Brown.” There was a bit of Poe thrown in as well, so all was not completely wasted.