Dark Asylum

A psychiatrist and a janitor do battle with a deranged serial killer while trapped inside of a 'Dark Asylum'.

The film begins with us finding out that a serial killer named "The Trasher" has killed well over a dozen people, leaving only their blood at the crime scene which is always near a dumpster. While on the beat, a couple of cops hear screaming underground near an open sewer grate. They decide to go down and end up finding The Trasher and all of his bodies. After killing one of the cops, he is captured and taken to the Crestmore Asylum for an evaluation by our main character Dr. Maggie Belham. The serial killer quickly escapes capture killing a bunch of hospital stage and cops before setting his sights on Maggie. While on the run in the hospital, Maggie runs into someone named Quitz who first claims to be the janitor but eventually reveals himself to be a patient who fell through the cracks of the system. Maggie and Quitz will have to fight The Trasher until midnight when the feds are scheduled to arrive for the transfer. Can they make it?

'Dark Asylum' is a very straight forward horror film that doesn't involve a lot of thinking, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given it's lower budget and not having the best script. The location of the asylum was really one of the best things about the movie. It was dark, creepy, and felt very dated and desolate. It was infuriating at times, with the characters constantly making dumb decisions for 90% of the movie. But overall, it kept me invested enough to sit through the whole thing and interested to see how it all played out.

Larry Drake is a scary dude. He is huge, and played the role of the psychotic "Trasher" very well. The rest of the acting had question marks for sure, but I thought it was alright overall and didn't distract from the movie. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova played final girl Maggie pretty well, hitting all the beats of fear and strength. Judd Nelson was all over the place as the janitor/patient Quitz, but had a likability to him which made me root for his survival at least.

I would recommend giving 'Dark Asylum' at least a watch if it comes your way. It was done at a time (2001) when a ton of these straight to video low budget horror films were being chucked out, so don't expect a masterpiece. Take it for the mindless thriller it is and you may enjoy the ride.

5/10.

"Dark Asylum" is the tale of a serial killer named "The Thrasher" who has a knack for killing young women and "keeping" their bodies. After 23 victims, "The Thrasher" is arrested and sent for a psych test, given by a beautiful young new doctor. When he escapes (shocker, huh?), it is up to the doctor and another patient at the hospital to get out of there alive. Will they?

"Dark Asylum" is an ordinary thriller that gets a cut above thanks to very good acting all around, a strange ending (it involves a girl in a cage!?!?), and an eery setting. This is one of those films that you've seen before but can't stop watching. Recommended as a late night rental. 6/10

Just to give an example of how poorly directed this piece of junk is: when Larry Drake is trying to escape from a straightjacket while chained to a chair, the close shots of him tearing out the seams of the straightjacket are backgrounded with Foley sound of him kicking the strut between the chair's legs - and yet he remains perfectly still! (Just try kicking the legs of a chair that you're sitting on and see if you can stay still, no matter how heavy you are - ludicrous.) Larry Drake, in the usual hackneyed role of serial killer-as-superman is badly miscast. Not to be weight-ist, but he is far too heavy to pull off the role convincingly. The film tries, for example, through shoddy editing techniques, to make us believe that a man as overweight as he is can outrun a bunch of cops. It looks so absurd that it's not even laughable. Actually everybody in this movie moves WAY too slowly. It's one of those films where the bad guy staggeringly advances on his victim while the victim, as yet uninjured and otherwise unimpaired, flounders on the floor, trying to scuttle away but managing instead to conveniently back into a wall, all the while yelling, "Nooooo! Please - aaaargh!" (Sort of like my reaction to this cinematic garbage.)

Well what can u say abt this movie?. Bad acting, predictable story, same crap as the other "Horror movies from 1990-2000". The killer looks like a big pig and isnt that scary. He got shot several times without any kind of bad injury(ohh yes he sew himself up). I really dont like this movie. If u wanna see real horror movies then i suggest u check the 70´s horror movies out. This one u can throw in the trashcan.

It's sounds interesting with the concept, but the execution is poorly done. There's barely any story other than the main character trying to figure out how to escape from the locked up asylum with a Madman inside. It does have a decent build-up with the madman introduction and how deadly he is. But most of the movie is just the characters trying to escape while surviving against the villain. The movie has a pacing issue with the suspenseful scenes happening too quickly to have tension in it and is predictable to guess what happened next. Also, there's not that much happened in the movie to make it interesting or enjoyable to watch throughout because it's mostly just the same things. The characters try to find ways to escape or fight back, but it ends up being a failure. The climax itself isn't that bad because it's somewhat suspenseful, but the characters don't make the best decisions.