Asylum

Rating R Formats DVD Genre horror Starring Sarah Roemer, Mark Rolston, Joe Inscoe Directed by David R. Ellis Publisher 20th Century Fox

Asylum is the perfect example of how a movie clings to every cliché to the point where it loses all individuality.  This disturbing torture fest is along the lines of a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, but with the graphic images seen in Hostel.  A self-destructing plot, convoluted acting, and non-gratuitous deaths don’t give any sort of ring as a horror film.  It’s too silly to be taken seriously, but isn’t campy enough to be fun.  It should’ve been one or the other, because incorporating both created a film that never had a distinctive tone.  Either that or the director got lazy.

In Asylum, Madison (Roemer) goes to the college where her brother took his own life in order to bring closure.  It turns out that next to their brand new dorm is an abandoned mental ward that was owned by a sadistic doctor (Rolston) who would torture and kill teenagers in his practice.  His patients rebelled and killed him instead, and his ghost decides to start killing off Madison’s college friends by forcing them to relive past traumas inside their heads.  The crazy doctor then finishes the job using gigantic needles to mutilate, torture, and kill the victims.  Many times the job is so disturbing I don’t know why anybody would find it entertaining.  I personally don’t go to the movies to see a crying eighteen-year-old begging for mercy and having his tongue and lips cut off, followed by serious face mutilation.

What was obnoxious about this film is that with the exception of a pointless flashback scene, the film started on the right notes for a campy horror fest.  The dorm mates were funny together, and there was the fun quirk of a caretaker (Inscoe) warning about the haunted dorm.  Everything went downhill as everybody surprisingly decided to open up about their past traumas.  It got even worse as they had to relive them before they were killed.  Where is the entertainment or thematic value behind people reliving molestation and spousal battery?  Suddenly everything stopped being fun and was taken too seriously.

The ending left me completely unsatisfied as an overextended chase leads to a confrontation in the woods in broad daylight.  Spooky, huh?  Madison never had to confront her fear when facing the doctor.  The way she defeated him was uninspired and dull.  In an unintentionally bad moment, the ghosts of Madison’s dead roommates fly away after the doctor’s defeat.  These ghosts resemble the spirits of dead characters from The Sims.  And then the movie suddenly cuts to black.  No closure or theme is brought up as to why I bothered to sit through this garbage.  And I was left scratching my head.

Some things about this film just plain bug me.  The doctor loved to torture and kill teenagers, but it was never explained why.  The only explanation given was “he believed he was curing them.”  The asylum itself bothered me just as much, because it was never renovated.  An abandoned asylum from the early 20th century would not be left decaying on a prestigious college campus.  I could understand if they somehow unlocked a secret passage to the doctor’s private chamber, but what was shown in the film was ridiculous.

As if a summary is even necessary, just avoid watching this movie.  There has got to be hundreds of slasher films better than Asylum, both ones that are serious and funny.  I will say that one thing about this movie scared the living daylights out of me…. Somebody actually paid money to make this film.  That’s the kind of stuff that’ll keep me up at night.