User blog:Jester of chaos/PE Proposal: Dr. Robert Parker


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What's the story?
The film is called Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf and is basically a modern retelling and realistic take of Red Riding Hood, the film is about a serial killer that apparently enjoyed the fairy tale and made a custom armor resembling a metal wolf and primarily targeted little girls, ultimately the killer is inside an insane asylum and decides to stage a power outage to basically tie up all loose ends.

Who is he and what does he do?
Dr. Robert Parker aka The Wolf is an infamous serial killer with a minimum of 15 victims who are said to be little girls and we see him ambush the one character's sister while they play hide and seek, ultimately he knocks out her brother (Johnny) as he writes down his mocking taunt "Are you The Woodcutter?" before retreating apparently taking the body of his victims with him. Years later Johnny becomes a detective to avenge his sister's death and finds a man dressed in The Wolf's armor that kills his partner/mentor but later revealed that it's a decoy with Dr. Parker using one of his father's former patients, Harold Grierson, that seemingly had homicidal tendencies. After Harold Grierson was captured Dr. Parker vouched he was insane to keep his eyes on him even though rendered mute via gunshot during his capture. Dr. Parker's preferred form of discipline is keeping shock collars on all patients claiming it is needed for safety (not completely wrong given some are dangerous). Mocking Grierson about thinking he was capable of being The Wolf he purposely comes closer so the collars goes off while continually insults Grierson's intelligence. After Johnny appears with the intent to kill Grierson, Parker tells him to leave claiming he doesn't want to make a scene and revealed to invited one nurse to bring her granddaughter, Sabrina, after she lost her parents. Realizing he could tie up all loose ends and enjoy another killing spree he secretly sets up a power outage so it'll look like Grierson broke out and killed anyone until Dr. Parker was forced to kill him. In this spree several patients are freed due to the outage and go on a rampage. Dr. Parker eventually puts on the armor and gives chase focusing on Sabrina due to it being the only child and ignores Johnny despite his attempts to provoke The Wolf to give her and his ex-wife, Jamie, time to escape.

Eventually Johnny attacks Grierson in another attempt to kill him only for The Wolf to attack both them, Grierson is killed while Johnny is severely hurt while we see Jamie has been locked in a cage above a small hole filled with water. Johnny confused and in pain asks who The Wolf is only for Dr. Parker to reveal the truth. When asked what Grierson had to do with all this Dr. Parker bluntly says he was just a good scapegoat he let wear the armor, Jamie asks why Dr. Parker stopped killing for so long if he was the killer only to have him respond "who said I stopped?". Jamie demands to know why he's this way only for Parker to ask if they want the diagnosis he'd give or the truth, his dad apparently would lower him in that cage when he questioned his authority but he claims while his dad was abusive, after the last time his dad raised the cage he came to desire that kind of power as he gained a "thirst for life". Jamie says he won't get away with his crimes only for him to point out his plan, even going as far to say this won't be his last killing spree and claim soon enough Jamie will join his collection of "beautiful girls" but while he uses the lever to lower her so she'll drown he goes to find Sabrina. Not much later he finds one of the friendly inmates, Oliver, and due to him wearing clothes he likely helped hide Sabrina thus kills him. Finding her in a vent he tries to attack only for his armor to be large to fit into it so he discards it only for Johnny, who's barely powering through the pain, kills him with the blades on the armor thus ending his plans.

Heinous Standard
Let me name off the named patients and what they do:

Jacobs - A large man that while generally friendly grows increasingly violent when he sees red. He only kills like two people including Mable all due to rage due to the red lights.

Mable - A cannibal that truly wants to be friends with her psychiatrist and only gets a couple kills on screen before being killed. Mable kills maybe two people but spared a child and genuinely felt betrayed when Jamie tried to literally stab in the back to protect herself along with providing a comedic line or two when interacting with Jamie.

Grierson - Has only a couple kills (I believe 2) throughout the film.

Oliver - An insane but affable man who just runs around naked with an obsession with toes and wears a few that Mable gave him. He helps Johnny and puts on close when he knows Sabrina is around and tries to protect her by hiding her thus ends up killed.

Honestly think Dr. Parker does more than enough to establish not only a pattern and the worse the film had to offer but stands out somewhat even for horror given his preferred victims. While we don't see a lot of the previous victims since they happened before the film we do see some of how he killed with ambushing Johnny's sister, the kills we do see in film, minimum onscreen: 4 (an assistant, Grierson's lawyer, Grierson and Johnny's sister) are enough to establish how he was with the others (minimum 14) plus all the other deaths are due to him setting up the power outage. It doesn't help he calls his victims (mostly children) "beautiful girls" adding small hints he might be a pedophile which is even worse given he supposedly took the bodies of some if not all.

Redeeming Features / Excuse
No redeeming features especially given he releases all patients knowing they would likely kill everyone they could including his staff and he only doesn't immediately kill Johnny as the only two times he is about to kill him he is mostly focusing on two children victims without seeing him as an actual threat. Even his act barely covers the fact he's a sadistic individual.

Now for excuse: His father was said to nearly drown him / lower him into the water for questioning his authority and we see extremely brief glimpses of his father lowering him, the thing is the film doesn't portray this with sympathy and it's little more than a throw away line. He doesn't show any real signs being haunted by this and even admits that he the last time it happened he realized he liked the idea of that much power over lives. Given the way the film does not play him with sympathy and simply as a cruel sadist I don't feel this is an issue especially given he has a the highest body count of the film.

Conclusion
I personally believe he's an easy keep.