Sublime (film)

Plot

The plot centers on the protagonist George Grieves (Cavanagh), who checks into the Mt. Abaddon Hospital for a routine procedure only to find horrors await him. Awakening from what was supposedly a simple colonoscopy, Grieves is told by hospital staff that due to confusion arising from similar patient names he was mistakenly given a sympathectomy to cure sweaty palms.

As the days tick by Mr. Grieves' post-operative experiences grow ever more bizarre until he finally realizes that he is caught inside a nightmare of his own creation and seems unable to escape or awaken back in the real world. He understands that something has gone wrong in his post-operative recovery which is keeping him trapped in this netherworld of manifestations of all of his worst fears but he understands neither what the problem is nor what, if anything, he can do to awaken from it.

We eventually see his condition from his family's perspective and it appears hopeless. The doctors explain that there was a complication during the colonoscopy which created an air bubble in his bloodstream that eventually reached his brain and caused so much damage that he ended up in an apparently permanent vegetative state. He's been dead to the outside world for 10 months and his family is being pressured to remove all artificial means of life support.

Meanwhile, back inside his own mind, George Grieves is in a desperate losing battle with his own manifested fears and decides that the only way out is to commit suicide in this dream-like state hoping that it will cause his real body to expire and free him from the interminable torment he's had to endure. He manages to leap from a 7th-floor window onto the concrete below, and the final shot is of his real-world body lying in an empty hospital room where it flatlines, closing its eyelids in physical death.

Cast

Tom Cavanagh as George Grieves

Kathleen York as Jenny

Katherine Cunningham-Eves as Zoe

Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter as P.J.

Cas Anvar as Dr. Sharazi

Paget Brewster as Andrea

David Clayton Rogers as Billy

Jordi Caballero as Friar Lazaro Mate

Sujata Day as Young Quechua Girl

Lilyan Chauvin as European Nurse

Shanna Collins as Chloe

Kyle Gallner as Ned

Dan Gerrity as The Bald Man

Michael Gregory as The Face

Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Mandingo

George Newbern as Frank / PVS Host

Bruce Nozick as Ira

Michelle Page as Rayven

Reception

The film garnered a 33% approval rating from 6 critics – a mixed to negative rating of 4.1 out of 10 – on the review-aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.