There are a lot of horror films that seem to take place in insane asylums or former insane asylums that are now haunted by some kind of demon, ghost, insane killer or some crazed doctor. It’s almost like as if a new sub genre is being formed that simply follows this kind of format. I think of a few off the bat, such as the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake, and it’s sequel, the recent film INSANITARIUM, HALLOWEEN H20, to name a few. This film is no different as it seems to follow the same format, except for the fact that this ASYLUM takes place in an asylum that has been converted into a dormitory.
ASYLUM is about a a group of college kids who are all now going to reside in a new college dormitory that once was an old asylum now renovated into a place for student living. The film revolves around a girl named Madison who’s father killed himself in front of her when she was a kid, and one year before this film takes her place, her brother took his own life as well. Now that she is starting a new life and is away at college she is making all kinds of new and interesting friends. But soon her new friends are disappearing one by one as a ghost from the asylums past is back, a doctor who used to do experiments on his patients and now he’s back to prey on the fears of the students now living in the old asylum.
The script for this film is a bit all over the place. The first half is pretty much an introduction to some very dull characters. Pretty much outside the lead character of Madison, who’s pretty much developed in the first ten minutes of the film, the rest of the movie is full of dispensable characters who for the first half of the film use a lot of foul language and talk about getting laid way to much. This is pretty much what happens during the first half of the script. The real horror story starts in the second act where all things begin to go wrong and each of these dispensable characters is pretty much taken care of by the good old doctor. Sure the second half is better but not by much. The dialogue is pretty bad, and it seems the movie is full or more one liners than anything else.
The acting in the film is so-so. Pretty much the only two performances that I thought deserved some merit were that of Sarah Roemer who played Madison and Joe Inscoe who played Wilbur Mackay. The rest of the cast was decent, some better than others, but it was your basic acting in a horror film, rum of the mill roles. Nothing good, but nothing to bad. On the flip side of things the movie did have some good production value. The set design was very well done and looked just as good as any Hollywood budgeted horror film like SAW or HOSTEL. The look of the film was pretty good as well, it had this look of a Dark Castle Production during some scenes and other it had a look similar to the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake or one of Rob Zombie’s films. It also had very good make-up and visual effects as well, and some pretty gruesome death scenes.
Overall, while I was not a big fan of the script and felt the story was something we’ve kind of all seen before; ASYLUM did have it’s moments and did get better as the film moved along, but not so much that I can sit here and tell you that it was a great horror film. It had some decent effects and really creepy looking sets, but the script for this film just didn’t really do it for me, and I looked at it as just another teen horror film to add to the pile of the many other direct to DVD teen horror films out there.
– Horror Bob
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
