Asylum of Fear

My first 2018 released movie, so how did it do?

So get this a bunch of 20 something ghost hunters go into an abandoned asylum and get picked off one by one by the ghosts within! And one of them is one of the doctors who went crazy and killed a bunch of people, original stuff right?

I've just described literally dozens of films, most famously House On Haunted Hill (1959 & 1999). Trouble is most of them did it considerably better than this. It is truly a carbon copy, I can't believe movies with this exact same plot continue to get released.

Asylum Of Fear is not a great start to 2018, 2017 wasn't great so let's hope things improve.

Looks the part, but that's about it.

The Good:

SFX are above par

The Bad:

Its been done before countless times

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

2018 has started on a big ol' low

Enough with the Asylums already unless you're gonna do something new

Some of these reviews are terrible and unjust. Seems more like people with an axe to grind. Full disclosure, I am friends with someone attached to this movie, but i will still give my honest opinion. There are a few issues that concern me, the story and premise are obviously not very original but that can really be said about most of the fare in this genre. The acting may not be great but it's not bad and certainly not as bad as some make it out to be. Some of the pace issues could've easily been addressed in editing. The special FX are very good, especially for an indie, the art department and production design team did quite well on this and there really aren't any glaring technical issues that you tend to find in a lot of indie projects. I'm glad I gave it a whirl.

When a team of paranormal investigators is hired to inspect a soon-to-be demolished mental institution, they discover horrifying clues that reveal the cause of a violent massacre by an insane doctor in the 1960's.

This movie is abysmal and clearly the good swath of reviews come from clowns who worked on the movie.

It's amateurish at best. The acting sucks and nothing extraordinary really happens.

It's really poorly directed and you wind up being bored.

Not worth 20 seconds of your time

I gave it a 6 could have been a 5. Unfortunately for the movie I actually fell asleep in the middle , reversed and fell asleep again-But wide awake for the beginning and the end. I think there's a little too much of the same scare tropes. Also, it's in the slasher category in a way. So be ready for for a declining number of actors, for the most part the worst actors are killed first, a thought dil touch by the director. The acting is better than most of these cheaper productions have and the story actually pulls together well. Yes, there are "plot holes" but they're passable. The plot has greater depth, development than in many high budget horror films. I think it is a easily watched , enjoyable story with some twists and an explanation which is often missing.

Let me start off by pointing out the good in this movie. The five main leads are the best point in the film. They work well off of each other and they do throw their all into their acting, even with the movie's cliched premise. Even the guy at the end (won't spoil who) threw his all into his performance. I genuinely became attached to these characters and was upset when things happened to them. Which is WAY more than most standard horror flicks.

The production value is also really nice, even though some of the effects can be lackluster (at one point, a guy's head is bashed in, but you can clearly tell it's just a mannequin).

Now for the bad, and there's quite a bit. Any actors that aren't our leads. The guy who plays Dr. Pender is horrible. He's supposed to play this scary psychotic, but it comes off so phoned in anytime he's on screen. Whenever there was a flashback scene, it just sucked me out of the film entirely, and I wanted to return to the present with the investigation. The deaths scenes during the flashbacks were hilarious. One person gets stabbed in the stomach with a scalpel and immediately dies. So many of the deaths were caused by injuries that wouldn't kill someone - literally flesh wounds. It's cheesy, it's great.

Also, the kid actors. I hate knocking child actors because they are children, but any time they have a speaking role, you'll find yourself asking if they ever bothered with a second take.

Again, the premise is cliched, but what do you expect for an asylum haunting flick?

Overall, I did enjoy this film for what it was. It wasn't that good, but it wasn't that bad. Half of it truly had my interest, while the other half kept losing it. If you're looking for something mindless, yet entertaining, I recommend it.