Villmark Asylum - Schreie aus dem Jenseits

I gave this film a two, and considering the photography, lighting and set design/location are all pure tens, that speaks volumes for the rest of this film.

The script and editing is on the level of something you'd expect from a kindergarten child, the acting is horrendous most of the time and the entire film is completely disjointed. The plot, where there is one, suffers from lack of logic, and the characters behave in a way no human ever would.

It has everything you'd expect from the worst of Jean Rollin, except the humor and playfulness. It's just not good.

I'd love to edit this film down to about five-six minutes and use that footage for a music video, but the film as it is is just junk.

The music incidentally is distracting as all hell.

There is a lot this film has going for it; it looks great, the setting is really creepy and it uses some good techniques to makes some of the situations the characters go through legitimately terrifying.

This is also where it falls down however as while the situations are clever and put you in the place of the character to where you wonder what you would do, you never really care about the characters themselves. We know next to nothing about them and they don't really stand out, so while we can replace ourselves with them in these scary situations, you could also replace them with any other character and it wouldn't make a difference. What's more it never really feels like there is much at stake, also it starts off by being really precise about what the people are there to do and how much time they have to do it in and then most of this is forgotten.

Overall this film could have been really good with a little more depth to the writing and a little more time spent getting to know the characters, but it is still worth a watch for the situations and setting alone.

This movie takes quite a while to get going and when it finally wraps up, you're left with more questions than answers. It's about a team of people who go into an old asylum building to assess it for hazardous materials. Or something. A sort of librarian goes with them to grab any records that might be worth keeping. They end up being the worst hide and seek players ever in a cat and mouse game between them and an unknown adversary. The kinds of decisions most of these characters make throughout the course of the movie will leave you with little sympathy for them. I found myself hoping they would die - especially the team leader. I did find it scary, creepy, and suspenseful, and I thought it was well shot and performed. I would have liked more of an explanation for what was happening and why, but if the intention was for us to be just as in the dark as the people in the movie, I sort of get it. But I didn't like it. I've seen other reviewers saying that this ripped off Session 9, and I can see why they said that, but I wasn't thinking of Session 9 while watching this. Session 9 was definitely better, though. See that instead.

Imagine Death Ship (2002) and Session 9 (2001) blended together. My favorite part of the film was the beginning. The story begins immediately. You get brief introductions to the characters and learn more as things progress.

Nicely filmed, directed, and the acting was fine. Locations interior and exterior were well utilized.

The first half of the film does keep you guessing a little - trying to figure out exactly what type of film this will be. The second half of the film continues through well-trodden territory with NO surprises.

Apparently, this was sold as a sequel. I haven't seen the first film, but it doesn't seem to be referenced at all. This movie is it's own thing. Not original at all....but a decent creepy sanatorium crawl.

I was lucky enough to catch an outdoor screening of this in the Norwegian woods. Sadly, despite the name of the movie, it's not really much about the woods this time around.

In this movie a crew of people are doing tests and gathering samples of an old asylum/hospital that is to be torn down. The big building is in the middle of nowhere, as it was built for avoiding the spread of tuberculosis. The janitor who has been in charge of the place is a bit difficult to work with, and therein starts the movie's conflict.

I actually liked the way that it tied into the first Villmark movie. It's only indirectly, but it's enough so that you get a bit extra from this movie if you have seen the first one. On the surface there's the fact that the hospital uses the lake from the first movie as its water supply, and that the janitor in this movie appears also in Villmark. But they also refer a bit to the WW2-history that is mentioned in the first movie.

The make up (or SFX?) in this movie were also quite nice, though I won't go into further details because of spoilers.

Now, did I like this movie? No. It does a lot of things correctly, like the setting and the make up, as mentioned. However, unlike the first movie, you barley get to know any of the characters, so when things start happening, you don't really care. There are some jump scare, but the movie doesn't really manage to build much tension. An emotional bond with the character's would have helped immensely, but the movie's attempt to give you brief glimpses into who these guys are, fails miserably. There's also a lot of poor/strange decisions (like in many horror movies).

I hated the ending of the previous film, but this movie's ending is actually alright.