One Totally Missed The Cuckoo's Nest
Added 9/9/2009
The story was predictable, safe and all too familiar, comparisons to the Nightmare on Elm Street series are on point, but the acting and FX helps things out considerably. The characters go back and forth from mildly likable to complete cannon fodder but it's doubtful you'll continue watching this for their sparkling personalities anyhow. No, chances are you're going to want to see these cardboard crazies offed in grisly ways by a cool supernatural stalker and that's exactly what you'll get, nothing more or less.
I can't really say I was disappointed in a film that promised absolutely nothing but more of the same so to end up getting a bit more was a plus for me. The only thing I had a real problem with here was the horrible outfit worn by Doctor Burke, the killer, it was a cross between The Village People and a Cenobite. Now that gave me chills!
Asylum isn't original or scary but it's entertaining nonetheless. I can't recommend it to people looking to purchase something fun but if you're looking to rent something slightly better than the usual crap you accidentally end up with, you could do worse than Asylum. It's not great, it's not even really good but I wasn't utterly disappointed as the final credits scrolled and that, for me, is always a positive when it comes to films like this. Give it a shot...or don't...you won't be missing anything you haven't seen a hundred times before.
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A Cliché Story at it Finest
Added 4/10/2009
This movie was bad, every thing about it was very cliché from the doctor to the story to the creepy janitor that everyone thinks is the killer. When I first saw the cover I was like hey this looks like it might not be to bad, I was thinking it would be maybe if I was really lucky something like a movie set in an actually asylum with crazies everywhere like, 12 Monkeys, The Jacket, or Girl Interrupted but darker and the Doctor would be more like Dr. Satan from House of 1000 Corpses, boy was I wrong, thank God I only rented it.
This movie was a joke.
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Unexpected
Added 10/12/2008
I have rented movies on itunes and I found amazon a much better site for renting movies. The quality was great and I enjoyed the movie greatly! It cost much less, with the special, than itunes. I recommend this over itunes!
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A formulaic stinkpile
Added 9/20/2008
I don't think I've seen anything this bad since USA cancelled Up All Night. In fact, the only thing that kept me watching was the hope that Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda were going to pop in at any moment and save the day with some ridiculous commentary.
No such luck.
This movie had some initial promise - the acting was, for the most part, pretty solid for straight-to-video fare. And the asylum-turned-college dormitory made for an eerie and interesting (albeit unbelievable) setting. Yet, this movie goes nowhere - in a hurry.
After the 15 minutes or so of set-up and character introduction, you get an hour of filler heavily "inspired" by previous horror films, particularly the Nightmare on Elm St. series (the shower episode was ripped off wholesale from #5). One by one, characters are singled out in [day] dream sequences/flashbacks by a nefarious though somewhat conflicted doctor (think Freddy Krueger with a medical degree) hell-bent on curing the world using a rather questionable ice pick in the upper eye socket lobotomy technique.
Keeping with the Nightmare theme, after the chosen couple escapes from the spookatorium in a bizarre patchwork of scenes (during which the time of day, the weather and even the geography seem to change), the Dr. gets his comeuppance with a poke in the noggin resulting in an explosive release of captured - ahem, lobotomized - young souls.
Entertaining if you think it is, I guess...
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Plese give US asylum from terrible films like Asylum
Added 9/7/2008
True fans of the horror genre are a unique breed of film aficionados. So ready are we to dismiss the misdeeds of Hollywood's prior failings to deliver on its promise of fright supplier that we will enter without question into whatever new offering it has sent our way in hopes that this will be one of those few special moments of spine tingling success.
Upon viewing the cover of Asylum I was intrigued and mildly apprehensive, but I succumbed and shelled out my dollars in pursuit of my thrill fix. The cover, while unoriginal in it's stereotypically adorned requisite dripping blood and creepy hair-pasted-to-her-head teen girl against a white tile backdrop didn't sway me or even set off the appropriate alarm bells which would have alerted me that Asylum was not going to be the next The Ring or The Grudge or The Eye or even the moderately entertaining Shutter. No, in Asylum, contrary to what it's cover might convey, we are thrust headlong once again into slasher land.
Fooled again was I as I watched what can only be described as the biggest ripoff of the maniac slasher genre that has ever been conceived. It is one thing to pay homage to good horror examples, but it is something else entirely to so outwardly and obviously recreate scenes. In an enclosed shower cubicle scene, we are subjected to a literal replay of a scene from the opening of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5. In virtually every scene we are subjected to a maniacal lobotomist who can only be described at Krueger Lite with a bit of Dr. Giggles and The Dentist thrown in for good measure. He resides in an old, closed for decades crazy house, half of which has been converted into modern co-ed dorms for (what else) college freshmen. The makers of this wreck of a film threw us right in the middle of the impact by asking us to react as though it were 1987 at the height of Freddy mania and embrace their ice pick wielding doctor as the new hero of the thunderstorm heavy, young and dumb teen filled night. What they forgot was the slow building character development that was equal parts scare factor and campiness. They bombarded us with their demon doctor's presence and simply expected us to unquestioningly love their new villain in spite of the fact that we haven't been properly acquainted nor would we ever want to be. Big mistake. It doesn't matter how many different types of creepy contact lenses the filmmakers can ask their wannabe baddie to wear, (and there sure were a lot of lenses) you simply can't pull the wool over the eyes of the viewer and make them believe that the film you're making is anything other than completely unoriginal and pure fakery. The teens walk around robotically telling their life stories and frailties in one scene, and literally a moment later, here comes the good doctor to exploit all of that pain, asking his victims to freely give him their suffering. Even Pinhead from Hellraiser would cringe at such an obvious juvenile attempt at fear inducement. (would Pinhead be available to torture the makers of this movie? Somebody get me one of those boxes....)I must remember henceforth to recite the horror fan maxim each time I am faced with a choice anew in the slasher horror genre: There's no place like Elm Street.... There's no place like Elm Street...
Zero stars for Asylum.
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