Tagline: Chaos begins when the heat rises.
The Chaos Experiment, formerly known as The Steam Experiment is a suspense thriller movie and revolves around six people trapped and terrorized in an urban Turkish bathhouse.
Val Kilmer plays a former university professor who overheats his hostages to prove that humans will devolve into chaos under the pressures of global warming. He tells a detective (Assante) that their location will be revealed if his hypothesis is printed as the local paper’s front-page headline.
The six potential victims are a former pro football player (Roberts), a former actress (Brown), a nurse (Muldoon), a waitress (Eve Mauro), a restaurateur (Quinn Duffy) and a writer (Cordelia Reynolds). As temperatures rise, the desperate detainees fight for survival.
About the Story
A deranged man calling himself James Pettis (Val Kilmer) approaches the Grand Rapids Press demanding that it publish his predictions about the upcoming demise of civilization due to the conditions of global warming, warning that he has trapped a group of six people in a Turkish-style steamroom to demonstrate the effects of this environment on humans. A local police detective Mancini (Armand Assante) tries to get Pettis to reveal information that will help him confirm the truth of his story, and to rescue the hostages, but over the course of the interrogation begins to suspect that either Pettis’ story is a delusional hoax, or that the steamroom killing has already taken place.
As Pettis describes developments in the streamroom to Mancini, the scene is shown of three men and three women meeting in the steamroom of a luxury hotel as part of an online dating promotion, then being locked in there together. When they discover that they have been locked in, they react badly: Frank (Quinn Duffy) becomes abusive to Jessie (Eve Mauro), and is killed in her defense by openly neurotic Margaret (Cordelia Reynolds).
Jessie is killed with a nail gun by an unseen assailant when she pokes her head through the small window in the steamroom door; Christopher (Patrick Muldoon) is injured in the hand with a nail as the window is boarded over from outside. Margaret becomes agitated and commits suicide. Grant (Eric Roberts) is bludgeoned by Catherine (Megan Brown) after he accuses her and Christopher of being allies of the perpetrators, and repeatedly holds her head underwater.
Mancini’s call to Pettis’ psychiatrist finally brings staff from the local state psychiatric hospital, from which Pettis recently escaped. It is revealed that Christopher and Catherine are staff at this facility, and are unhappy with Pettis for going to the news media and police with this story.
About the Production
Taking advantage of economic incentives for filming in Michigan, the script was revised to set the story in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Filming took place over four weeks in September 2008, including scenes at the offices of The Grand Rapids Press, the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, the Grand Rapids Public Museum, and other downtown locations. The budget for the film was $7 million. The shots of skyscrapers are actually of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland.
The film had a limited theatrical release, playing to small audiences on two screens for one week in Grand Rapids, and for one week in nearby Lansing.
The Chaos Experiment (2009)
Directed by: Philippe Martinez
Starring: Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, Eric Roberts, Megan Brown, Patrick Muldoon, Eve Mauro, Quinn Duffy, Cordelia Reynolds, Carrie Drazek, Julianne Howe-Bouwens, Eileen Briesch, James Cantrell
Screenplay by: Rob Malkani
Production Design by: John A.C. Despres
Cinematography by: Erik Curtis
Film Editing by: Christopher Robin Bell
Costume Design by: Sabra Temple
Set Decoration by: Scott Baisden, Walter Lodes, Jason Roth, Selina van den Brink
Art Direction by: David Winick
Music by: Don MacDonald
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and brief nudity.
Distributed by: Cinepro Pictures
Release Date: August 4, 2009
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