Many viewers are giving this film a high rating and are upset if anyone gives a lower rating. They are judging this film on the disease and not the movie. IMDb uses criteria to arrive at a fair value, which in most cases is more accurate. It is not an average of all ratings added together but is based on all ratings made.My rating of 6 for this important movie is very close to this adjusted final rating and thus my thoughts about the movie tallies with this logic. The movie itself is only average, dealing with a very important subject. I am glad to have seen it.

Let me first note that I read the book before seeing this, so that is an aspect of my review. The movie, as it was, probably earned a solid eight. Performances by the cast were I suppose not exceptional, but were up to the task. I particularly enjoyed Carrie-Anne Moss as the mom. The always charming Chloë Grace Moretz turned in a workmanlike performance in an extremely challenging role. For those who don't already know it, the movie is based on the true story of Susannah Cahalan and her harrowing journey to find the cause of her mental breakdowns, seizures, hallucinations, and other symptoms, and the challenges her friends, coworkers, boyfriend, and family have of recognizing her illness and finding the right doctor. Once she reaches Doctor Kahn and, through her, Doctor Najjar, it plays like an episode of House as the medical team struggles to determine the root cause of her trouble, which proves to be an extremely rare and nearly unheard of disease. I only gave the movie a score of seven because, like House, it basically ends at the point where the correct diagnosis was found and really glosses over all the challenges she still faced recovering from it. Despite this flaw, it was still well worth the time to watch, and I'd further encourage anyone who has friends or family struggling with unexplained mental illness to not only watch the movie, but read Cahalan's book of the same name. Doctor Najjar's work, in particular, represents the cutting edge of 21st century medicine in this area.

While the incident was a rare and fascinating one, I felt that there could have been a lot more depth to the actual script. The acting was well done, but I felt like I learned little about this disease and it truly a fascinating and terrible one. The bulk of the screen time was devoted to the main character's break with reality and only the last 20 minutes or so was spent from the time she has the biopsy and recovers. Up until the last ten minutes, Susannah was still recovering from surgery.I would have liked to know more about the disease. What causes it? Is it hereditary? How is it related to regular epilepsy. Besides the small bit showing her walking with a can, the Physical therapy process could have been brought in more. Because there were not many peaks and valleys in the storyline it came off pretty flat for me.

I watched this with a group of people and we all liked it. We did think that the acting was poor in some scenes. But Chloë Grace Moretz did an amazing job showing what Suzzanah went through. It's one of those movies that has you guessing till the very end.