I was looking at Netflix for a film to fill the afternoon hours when I came across a movie called The Lost Patient. It was in French, but the premise sounded intriguing so I thought I would give it a try.

The premise listed on Netflix said, “After waking up from a coma with no memory of the night when his entire family was murdered, a young man and his psychiatrist try to untangle the truth.” It was listed as a mystery with a tone of ominous and dark. It sounded good.

It was not.

The film, which starred Txomin Vergez as Thomas, the boy who spent three years in a coma, was really slow, intentionally misleading and fairly predictable. It seemed to want to base the plot on the twist that came near the end of the film, but you could probably see it coming if you paid attention.

After seeing the reveal, there were scenes from earlier in the movie that did not make much sense. With classic twist ending such as The Sixth Sense, when you find out the truth, everything falls into place and when you rewatch it, you see things that you hadn’t seen upon a first watch. The Lost Patient, however, only muddied the rest of the film with what it revealed at the end. It also brought some absolute question on some of the behaviors and choices of the other characters of the film.

I was fooled into the movie, though the runtime was just an hour and a half. Despite the shorter run time, it felt fairly long.

2.2 stars