While on a research outing, a group of urban explorers get more than they bargained for when the visit the site of an abandoned mental hospital and discover it's hiding a terrifying secret. ... Read allWhile on a research outing, a group of urban explorers get more than they bargained for when the visit the site of an abandoned mental hospital and discover it's hiding a terrifying secret. Trapped in this giant prison, they start to disappear one by one. Their only chance to esc... Read allWhile on a research outing, a group of urban explorers get more than they bargained for when the visit the site of an abandoned mental hospital and discover it's hiding a terrifying secret. Trapped in this giant prison, they start to disappear one by one. Their only chance to escape... to put together seemingly random clues, avoid a killer, and use their unique skills... Read all
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That's it. Those are the good elements here. Super bad elements are the way over lit everything. It looks like old Scoop lights aimed at people. Acting is pretty bad but the writing doesn't deserve much better. Villain is stupid looking fat guy who almost trips coming down a set of stairs near the end. All the gore, other than hand effect is poor and editing doesn't help movie at all. Other comment about the generally very low video quality is true, have not seen shot on video stuff look this bad in a number of years. It is all nicely in focus though. Audio quality is super bad too, much post dubbing of noisy outdoor scenes early on, though once they get inside that stops and none too soon, it's like a foreign film before that, so much is dubbed. Lots of supposed Jump Scare moments none of which work. Padded credits at front and back to get the "film" to a feeble bare minimum lenght of 85 minutes. They did have a crane for some of the shoot but it's not very well used. This is barely passing grade film school stuff at best.
So why does Lion'sgate continue to pick up stuff like this and put their name on it and hurl it at the horror audience? This one was finished in 2007 and only now in 2009/2010 getting released so maybe they bought it long ago or made a poor offer that the producer's had to eventually accept. Why why why? Because they don't care or understand horror films they just push the crap out there, I guess they are counting on the increasingly bad SAW films to retain some fan base. Only THE ASYLUM puts out stuff with so much contempt for the fans and Lionsgate should know better. It's really a shame on them as a company to show now pride at all in their output. The producers of this made a pretty amateur movie, they may not know how to make a better movie, but Lionsgate produces theatrical films and inherited a large library of films of some note. It's shameful. Unless it's a SAW film anything with Lionsgate's name on it is a rip off for fans and also hurt the market, and those SAW films are going downhill fast.
The story is very simple, a bunch of teens led by Dr. Richard Magellan visit an abandoned prison, which the Doc believes to have been used by the government to conduct experiments using serial killers as guinea pigs. The Doc wishes to document the place and find out the 'truth'. They enter the prison and that's when people start getting bumped off.
Despite its low budget the general filming and editing is quite good, some nice effects used in places, the gore scenes (plenty of them) are done well with no cgi, though most kills are off screen the results of the brutal attacks are shown and look pretty good. Unfortunately this is were the good stuff ends.
The acting is weak, almost all the characters are weak and/or annoying - in fact the only 'likeable' character is 'Studs' and it seems like he was the character we're supposed to hate! The lead actor playing the doc is simply boring and virtually monotone. 'Sarah' is so annoying I wanted her to die in the first 10 mins, actually that goes for most of the characters.
There is near zero back story or character development, the story pushes an expected twist - which doesn't happen and most annoying of all is that there is no answers, no conclusions!
The door has been left open for a sequel, I really hope the people involved don't bother.
Well filmed, good make-up, bad characters, crap story.
3/10
Did you know
- TriviaAll entries contain spoilers
- GoofsMonica's thong panties color change from pink to black.
- ConnectionsReferences Le Magicien d'Oz (1939)
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- サイコ・ウォード 封鎖病棟 絶体絶命
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- Budget
- CA$50,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
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