In the new film, Nurse Kathy Jacquard (Sharni Vinson) becomes fascinated with coma victim (Jackson Gallagher). But while Kathy's weirdly drawn to Patrick, she can only get so close to him. He's the pet project of sadistic know-it-all Doctor Roget ("Game of Thrones"'s Charles Dance), and the charge of mysteriously over-protective Matron Cassidy ("Six Feet Under"'s Rachel Griffiths). Soon, Kathy discovers that Patrick not only knows what's being done to him, but is also a psychic and has a mad crush on her. Predictably, nobody believes Kathy's outlandish claims, even after Patrick invades her privacy (he's looking at her Facebook photos!) and hurts her friends and loved ones.

The fact that nobody believes Kathy at first makes sense beyond expected generic reasons. This is mostly thanks to King's clever script, which re-arranges and beefs up lines from the original "Patrick." For example, King explains Roget's cruel motives more smoothly than Everett De Roche did in his original 1978 screenplay. In King's version, Roget's callousness initially seems to stem from his familiarity with Patrick. How could Kathy, a relatively inexperienced nurse, notice things he hasn't picked up during years of study? 

But eventually, Roget loses his patience with Kathy, and reveals more about himself. Dance's Roget isn't just a patronizing scientist, but a zealot, and a sadist. He administers shock therapy to Patrick with an antiquated device he says he won at a carnival, and insists that a higher calling motivates him. This latter point is especially interesting since, in the original, Roget is using Patrick to find out what happens at the point of death, but doesn't seem interested in what Kathy identifies as Patrick's "soul." So while knowing a little more about Roget may not add much to his character, it does add something.

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