Asylum (2008)

Six unsuspecting college co-eds discover their dorm was once the site of a notorious insane asylum infamous for conducting gruesome lobotomy's on its teenage inmates during the 1930's. When the dorm begins to echo scenes from its torture chamber past the beautiful heroine (Roemer) questions her sanity and if she will make it out alive.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/HAUNTED HOUSE Rating: R UPC: 883904107804 Manufacturer No: M110780 Product Description

A formulaic stinkpile

I don't think I've seen anything this bad since USA cancelled Up All Night. In fact, the only thing that kept me watching was the hope that Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda were going to pop in at any moment and save the day with some ridiculous commentary.

No such luck.

This movie had some initial promise - the acting was, for the most part, pretty solid for straight-to-video fare. And the asylum-turned-college dormitory made for an eerie and interesting (albeit unbelievable) setting. Yet, this movie goes nowhere - in a hurry.

After the 15 minutes or so of set-up and character introduction, you get an hour of filler heavily "inspired" by previous horror films, particularly the Nightmare on Elm St. series (the shower episode was ripped off wholesale from #5). One by one, characters are singled out in [day] dream sequences/flashbacks by a nefarious though somewhat conflicted doctor (think Freddy Krueger with a medical degree) hell-bent on curing the world using a rather questionable ice pick in the upper eye socket lobotomy technique.

Keeping with the Nightmare theme, after the chosen couple escapes from the spookatorium in a bizarre patchwork of scenes (during which the time of day, the weather and even the geography seem to change), the Dr. gets his comeuppance with a poke in the noggin resulting in an explosive release of captured - ahem, lobotomized - young souls.

Entertaining if you think it is, I guess... September 20, 2008

Plese give US asylum from terrible films like Asylum

True fans of the horror genre are a unique breed of film aficionados. So ready are we to dismiss the misdeeds of Hollywood's prior failings to deliver on its promise of fright supplier that we will enter without question into whatever new offering it has sent our way in hopes that this will be one of those few special moments of spine tingling success.

Upon viewing the cover of Asylum I was intrigued and mildly apprehensive, but I succumbed and shelled out my dollars in pursuit of my thrill fix. The cover, while unoriginal in it's stereotypically adorned requisite dripping blood and creepy hair-pasted-to-her-head teen girl against a white tile backdrop didn't sway me or even set off the appropriate alarm bells which would have alerted me that Asylum was not going to be the next The Ring or The Grudge or The Eye or even the moderately entertaining Shutter. No, in Asylum, contrary to what it's cover might convey, we are thrust headlong once again into slasher land.

Fooled again was I as I watched what can only be described as the biggest ripoff of the maniac slasher genre that has ever been conceived. It is one thing to pay homage to good horror examples, but it is something else entirely to so outwardly and obviously recreate scenes. In an enclosed shower cubicle scene, we are subjected to a literal replay of a scene from the opening of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5. In virtually every scene we are subjected to a maniacal lobotomist who can only be described at Krueger Lite with a bit of Dr. Giggles and The Dentist thrown in for good measure. He resides in an old, closed for decades crazy house, half of which has been converted into modern co-ed dorms for (what else) college freshmen. The makers of this wreck of a film threw us right in the middle of the impact by asking us to react as though it were 1987 at the height of Freddy mania and embrace their ice pick wielding doctor as the new hero of the thunderstorm heavy, young and dumb teen filled night. What they forgot was the slow building character development that was equal parts scare factor and campiness. They bombarded us with their demon doctor's presence and simply expected us to unquestioningly love their new villain in spite of the fact that we haven't been properly acquainted nor would we ever want to be. Big mistake. It doesn't matter how many different types of creepy contact lenses the filmmakers can ask their wannabe baddie to wear, (and there sure were a lot of lenses) you simply can't pull the wool over the eyes of the viewer and make them believe that the film you're making is anything other than completely unoriginal and pure fakery. The teens walk around robotically telling their life stories and frailties in one scene, and literally a moment later, here comes the good doctor to exploit all of that pain, asking his victims to freely give him their suffering. Even Pinhead from Hellraiser would cringe at such an obvious juvenile attempt at fear inducement. (would Pinhead be available to torture the makers of this movie? Somebody get me one of those boxes....)I must remember henceforth to recite the horror fan maxim each time I am faced with a choice anew in the slasher horror genre: There's no place like Elm Street.... There's no place like Elm Street...
Zero stars for Asylum.
September 7, 2008

a horrific good time

Interesting change of pace horror tale with very strong characters and a super bad bad guy that keeps you glued to the screen. The pacing of the action was handled in excellent fashion by director David R Ellis. August 29, 2008

Bad

I don't even know what to say about this. It was just bad. Bad acting, bad script, bad characters, bad ending. The premise was good but the execution wasn't. A very forgettable movie. August 7, 2008

A very pleasant surprise

Several college students attending freshman orientation get placed in a dorm where a psychiatrist years ago performed bizarre experiments on children suffering from mental disorders. Not surprisingly, his body was never found after his reported demise. Also not a shock, all of our youngsters have some secret that affects their psyche to some extent, more than your typical teenage angst. Characters begin to disappear and meet their ends in bloody and imaginative fashion, and it's up to the remaining students to solve the mystery and end the terror before there is no one left.

There is little new here, and that does lessen the suspense to a certain degree, but there is more to enjoy that to hate. The acting is above average for a film like this, it looks good, there is a creepy atmosphere present throughout most of the film, and the villain and death scenes are good enough to hold your attention. It goes without saying the characters are not exactly well-developed, but if that was a concern, surely you wouldn't be considering watching this. It's passable evening entertainment that, quite frankly, is still better than recent horror at the theater, and it's more than worth a rental. July 24, 2008

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