Asylum

Dir. David R. Ellis

Rating: 1.5  |  0 User Reviews  |  Send to Friend

By Alex Berg

For a start, the feeling of dread that I experienced after watching this miserable train wreck of a film had nothing to do with any lingering feelings of terror, but rather, the dread that I would have to think about it long enough to write a review. Roughly, the film is about a group of college students who discover that a restricted area of their dorm was once a mental asylum for young people run by an insane doctor. Madison (Sarah Roemer) is the lead college-student-in-peril, pushed over the edge of mental stability after witnessing her father commit suicide. Just days into freshman year, her chums are murdered by the ghost of the asylum’s former crazy doctor. Ridiculous plot aside, the first 40 minutes of the film consists almost entirely of insipid dialogue between the protagonists, punctured mercifully every now and then by one of Madison’s many drippy hallucinations. The dialogue is predictable and unentertaining, relying far too much on one-dimensional characters to carry the torch (Jock to Virgin: “put a condom on and smack it on the chicken”). There may be an attempt to create interesting narratives, but it results in a mish-mosh of conversations that all assume utter idiocy of its audience. The movie was shot on a real college campus, however the production lacks any quality that could help make the plot more believable. There is wretched lighting in several key scenes, making it difficult to see the actors, the camera work is camcorder-esque at best, and the “special effects” could be mastered by a computer-literate 12-year-old. The movie could have redeemed itself with some skin-crawling violence, but even the killing of each character is dull, involving buckets of fake blood and little else. There are plenty of crappy horror films with the same issues, but the real kicker of this one is that it’s not even bad enough to be funny. Director David R. Ellis, the man who brought the world the miserable Snakes on a Plane, wants you to take his crapfest seriously -- making it near-lethally laborious. Trust me, there are better ways to go.

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