Asylum

From director David R. Ellis (whose prior credits include "Final Destination 2" and "Snakes on a Plane") comes "Asylum," a psychological horror film in which a group of college students come to find that their campus was once the spot where a mad-doctor practiced his own twisted brand of medicine. A Freddy Krueger type whose patients eventually turned on him, the doctor still haunts the halls, preying on the students and tapping into their deep-seeded emotional scars.

The film hinges on an assortment of clichés, but that's not to say that some enjoyment can't be milked from it. While you can see nearly every moment coming from miles away, the film gets by with a bit of style and energy, courtesy of Ellis. Its story is really "A Nightmare on Elm Street"-lite, but fans of the 80's franchise (as well as other similar films from the era) may just get some thrills from seeing a film pay tribute to or at least attempting to live up to its legacy (they'll also appreciate a role by Lin Shaye as the mother of one of the students).

The true weakness of the film is in its paper-thin script and characters and its over-reliance on gross-out gore over suspense. You might squirm in your seat during a scene where a character gets his lips ripped off and his tongue cut-out, but you won't necessarily care about the character himself, which is always a bad thing for a horror movie. Also, the final act reaches some ridiculous territory and will no doubt leave your eyes rolling. Go into "Asylum" with low-expectations of some fluff-horror, and you might just appreciate what the film has to offer.

If you're scared of creepy and abandoned asylums, this movie will cure you of it. The acting is okay, the story doesn't usually matter much to me in a really good horror movie, but the dialog and boring villain make this a very dull film.

Looking back on Asylum, it did a lot of things well. The mood was set right, the viewer was able to get familiar with the group of teens before they go, and the deaths were deep and interesting. However I had the vibe during and after the movie that it was not above average. A few more big name actors could've helped. Also the story is forced on you, a little unbelievable and makes no ammends.

Asylum does a good job of setting up a scary plot. They are college students who are living in a dorm that was once an insane asylum run by a doctor who was killed by his patients for his brutal techniques. The deaths were very well thought out. The mood emanates very well and there are plenty of scary moments.

The biggest problem with asylum was the linear, predictable and unforgiving and under explained plot. A little twist here and a cliff hanger there really would've helped. The acting was good for a horror movie, but no one really stuck. Maybe if there was a little more focus on the main character and a bigger named actress it may have stuck more.

I would recommend this movie to any horror movie fan. It's not great but will have at least a couple parts you admire. If anything at the end you wont be upset you watched it.

When given a good script and actors, Ellis can make half decent, watchable movies, but I think he's basically doomed to make derivative, highly clichéd horror movies for the next ten years, with most of them probably going direct-to-video, before fading into deserved obscurity.

Asylum is an annoying pastiche of past horror movies, drawing most of its influence from Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street. It's populated by tired stereotypes (the jock, the nerd, the slut, the weird girl, etc) who dutifully recite their two minutes of back story prior to their grisly death. Yes, it's nice to find any degree of back story whatsoever in a low budget horror movie, but the writing is so terrible and the characters are all so annoying that I just wanted them all to just shut up.

The special effects and gore were fairly well done, which might make up for the terrible writing and directing, if you're obsessed with slasher movies. If all you want out of a movie is to see annoying, stereotypical teens butchered by a ghost, then you could do worse than this movie, but I'm not sure why you would waste your time.

What to think of this movie. It's Mark Rolston who makes the movie, appeared before in Corman's Humanoids from the deep and Saw V he gives a perfect performance, made me even think a bit of pinhead from hellraiser. He's got the face to play a killer. But the hardest part is the storyline. Too poor. They could have made an excellent flick but there isn't enough "suffering" in it, not that much gore or blood. The youth that is going to be killed are the typical kind of kids appearing in a horror movie. The oversexed mr macho guy, the sexy girl, the nerd, the thinking girl, the bastard boss,...They all play very well but again, their own storyline isn't worked out enough. Even the usual nudity doens't give it a surplus value. It's a shame because in a time of torture porn they could have made a classic one. They should have known when you use a sentence like "give me your suffering" that you should give people real suffering. Watch it for Rolston's performance, no more no less.