Asylum: Twisted Horror and Fantasy Tales

Without a doubt, the worst film I've seen for a long while. Boring, disconnected, pretentious.

One of your typical anthology movies that tries to tie stories together and be clever, but instead turning out a confusing mess of garbage. Even if it replaced the boring host in between segments with The Crypt Keeper himself, it couldn't save this sinking ship.

It started off ok, but just nose dives before it's halfway through. A couple of the stories are ok, some have some decent visual FX and gore moments, but overall it falls flat on being anything memorable other than it tried to hard to have hidden messeges that try to be clever, but are just eye rolling bad.

Had it been edited better, and had 45 mins cut out of it, it would've made a decent Tales from the Crypt episode. Unfortunately what this actually is, is a decent 20 minute idea stetched out painfully with an extra hour of filler to get it to be released as a full length feature rather than the short TV episode it should've been.

First off, if you have already seen The Cleansing Hour about the priest who sets up fabricated exorcisms, which ends up biting him in the ass, you can just skip the first 20 minutes unless you'd like to see it again. It really good, but its been featured in multiple horror shortfilm anthologies in addition to having a feature length version as a result of the shortfilm being so well received. On a sidenote, if you haven't seen that feature length version of it, give that a watch too.

As for Asylum, it wasn't mind numbingly dumb but it also wasn't remarkable by any means. Although I'm not really fond of slashers and I'm more prone to creature features, the second shortfilm has a really awesome killer. Thing is, it was so short and void of any real story that it really ruined the character altogether.

That was the thing about this anthology. The only ones that were kinda neat were too short to even make any sense out of. Now, I will say the animated one was cute and pretty much laid out a complete story. Besides that one, there was a Spanish shortfilm about a guy's funeral that pretty much summed itself up. I got a kick out of that one.

Those were the only ones that were worth anything in my opinion. The one I previously mentioned about the masked killer though was just such a cool idea that I think the writer and directors really should consider expanding upon it. Maybe think about giving that one it's own feature length film with a solid story. I think they just executed that in such a way that it took a really good idea and turned it into a "The hell did I just watch?" type of deal.

Anyway, if you like short horror films, just give it a go and see what you think.

Like with many short movie anthologies this has good and not so good entries. I reckon some might argue some weak entries actually. But overall I did like what I got served here. Some are a bit stranger than others too and I was a bit irritated by how certain segments were cut in. You don't seem to get a resolution ... or not one you may hope for with some shorts here.

Having said that, this is horror and it will be a matter of taste. One thing is for sure, there is enough blood and gore and it begins with a bang. Whatever you may think of the first story, it is more than well made and it hits all the right points. Same goes for the animated one ... so all in all a more than decent effort.

As with all anthologies, there are good stories and there are bad ones. I felt this was a bit more unique than a lot of the more recent horror anthologies I've seen. The stories were mostly funny, quirky, and weird. It does have some really boring bits though but I'd still recommending watching it.