Paranormal Asylum

While Paranormal Asylum benefits from a wonderful concept, that of searching for the true story of Typhoid Mary, it suffers from three major problems.

1 - a ridiculous back story of the film maker trying to get out from under his girlfriend's family.

2 - filming quality that, while the coloring is lovely, it looks either like a college graduation film or a commercial for local TV.

3 - terrible acting. Across the board, terrible acting. No one in this film was even Disney level quality. While good looking and in great shape, while they had nice hair even, the range of their dramatic skills covered the gamut from a to b.

On the positive side - when the film sticks to the found footage genre (which I love!) it is above average. Unfortunately, it only uses found footage techniques for about 15-20 minutes total. This is unfortunate, because the tricks used in those scenes are excellent.

Ultimately, I was left dissatisfied with the movie, knowing that it could have been so much more which is a shame, because I enjoy most found footage movies. I give it a 3 for the few minutes of found footage techniques and the twists employed therein.

I was warned - but I still watched it.

Plot ruined by terrible acting, terrible effects, terrible dialogue and character interactions. They could have foregone the badly animated effects, particularly the ghost on the train track which looked like the Pilsbury Dough Man without a head, and spent it on better actors. Having a ghost at every turn could be replaced perhaps with long pauses where the viewer's imagination creates a sense of something. The two main characters, film-makers, had no discernible relationship as friends, the one with darker hair was just angry all the time and completely ignoring the fact that his friend had seen ghosts even though he was setting up cameras to find ghosts. There are other emotions in life. Perhaps they should have been two less emotional college friends studying film. The taller one was also not a very good film-maker anyway as he didn't seem to film anything.

The camera filter was also odd, sort of dark-edged, not either good quality and saturated or just hand-held home camera. The sound was also strange as if it had been dubbed, the position of the source didn't seem to match where people were standing sometimes.

I also think that the makeup artist hired to turn the main female character into an angry spirit thought that she was preparing Marilyn Manson for a gig.

Words cannot express how terrible this movie was. I have it ranked as the second worst movie I have ever seen (Dracula 3000 being the worst) Some of the positives on this movie - Michelle had nice white teeth, the men had nicely brushed hair, and the story of Typhoid Mary of course has potential. I think the biggest problem with this film (as everyone else has pointed out) is that there was no chemistry at all, and all the interactions seemed forced and very unbelievable. You can fault the terrible acting, the struggle to remember their lines, or the hokey side stories. Any scene with struggling in it ... wow ... bad doesn't do justice. All in all - the biggest issue was everything. To quote my wife - "Why is this movie lasting so long?" (it runs 89 mins) We watched this for *free* on Netflix, and still felt ripped off (you can fault us for not turning it off I guess)

If you are tempted to watch this film ... don't. Grab a camera, some friends, heck - even grab a few drinks, and make your own version, it will be better than this!

Plain and simple, this movie sucks monkey balls. I've lost IQ points sitting through this travesty. Blah blah stupid plot Blah blah pi$$ poor acting Blah Blah too many plot twists going no where Blah Blah craptacular Blah blah slit my wrists this sucks. I am writing all this gibberish because they demand 10 lines when it barely deserves 10 words. This movie is horrible. what you have just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

First sign this movie is going to be terrible... two guys go out to an old ruined home in the woods, one guy sees an old lady, the first guy says, why are you freaking out about old ladies? Second guy doesn't point out the fact that she doesn't exist? lol... The writing is just that bad... and that's the very first scene, so I have my trusty popcorn and my kitty cat, but it looks like this one is going to be really bad.

I love horror films, paranormal films that take place in an asylum so I gave it a shot, I don't mind independent movies, amateur actors, if the story is really good.

I was interested in the story being told here, but the problems are many.

The script is not very well written, the scenes are poorly utilized, such as when a guy goes to see archives, he doesn't seem to find anything and the whole scene comes off as worthless, adding no depth or tension or reason to the film.

Something begins to happen but then just cuts and it's over and no one's that impressed or surprised, which makes no sense.

Poorly written characters throughout.

No one has any chemistry, the friendship, the girlfriend? No one has any believable connection or emotion to the relationships they're supposed to be portraying... Laura Gilreath and Aaron Mathias do an alright job with the maddeningly bad script and direction.

I love when the half brother is giving Andy sh*t about borrowing his boat, and then when we finally see the boat it's a pretty cheap boat with cheap plastic back yard chairs tied together.

There's some decent story twists that I enjoyed, such as Mary finding him and getting taken back to the hospital and Aaron pursuing, showing you the movie really could have been better if they had just kept the story more human and not tried to be so "smart" with the dialog that really hurt the film.

1/10