Asylum (2008)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The film opens with an 8 year old girl hearing shouting, walks out of her room to sit on the stairs where her 9 year old brother is already watching their parents having a screaming match. The Father ends up grabbing a gun & shooting himself whilst the Mother yells & begs for him to stop.Flash forward, the little girl is now all grown up & leaving the nest for college. Madison (Sarah Roemer) walks to her new dorm, the janitor warns her of this building which is disregarded by the security man.We soon learn from String (Cody Kasch) - a fun loving little geek - that the building was an Asylum back in the day where the Doctor performed experiments on teenagers with the belief he could cure mental illness brought on by childhood trauma.After that, one by one, each of the college kids are killed. Beginning with String - where he is choked by his own string... to Maya ( Carolina Garcia) where her abusive ex cuts her to death, & more, in what comes across as a hallucination to them.Meanwhile, Madison is dealing with the demons of her past, the suicide of her brother who attended the very same college - as well as trying to defeat the Doctor so the remaining students can live on.With odd & ominous rock music, sad background of each character & weird Doctor guy... This film was repetitive & sub par.The opening scene really drew me in & set the tone for the film, a dark & unsettling one. But it failed to impress me for a movie of this genre.The end was.. an end. It finished with Holt (Jake Muxworthy) & Madison escaping the dorm/asylum & running in the forest (cliché?) then Madison sacrificing herself for Holt only to release the spirits from the Doctor, thus ending his reign of terror & ultimately his existence. Then, after getting out of the forest, the two lovebirds casually hold hands & walk on the road like nothing life altering just happened to them...Overall, the development of the characters was lacking or rushed & the typical Frat guy Tommy (Travis Van Winkle) felt forced & the humour wasn't there despite them trying.Lacking character development - Forced cliché characters - Weird Doctor in bondage with bad make up & a big grudge on everyone just cause - Repetitive - Awful, awful musicEnd vote for this film is a 2Samm.Wise

Horrendous dialogue and utterly moronic characters ruin whatever tiny little bit of potential – as a mere time-waster - this standard horror tale had. As if REAL American teens aren't dumb enough; do we really need movies churning out even DUMBER teen zombies than the ones that are currently milling around, saying "yo-yo dude bro" every 5 seconds? I have never understood this incessant urge of bad film-makers to turn U.S. teen sheep into even bigger gits than they really are.The blond guy has got to be the most unfunny bully/sidekick/what-have-you of all time. The writer had taken the moronic, overused cliché of the arrogant, blond, sneering, 80s alpha-male-wannabe hotshot and then placed him in overdrive mode. You won't believe the garbage that comes out of his mouth; literally nobody on the planet talks like that. We are supposed to look forward to his ghastly ghostly execution, we get it; no need for overkill, shmucks.Just as bad is the elderly geezer who plays the killer ghost. When your role model is Robert Englund's cheesy/unfunny Freddy Kruger character you can't amount to much, especially not on the big-screen. The less-is-more principle evidently falls on deaf ears when it comes to incurable dilettante over-actors. Add to that the moronic background story of yet another fictional Dr. Mengele wrecking havoc in a former asylum, and you've completed your collection of totally worn-out horror clichés.The utterly predictable, stereotypical finale was like watching a financial report on CNN: dull as hell. Utterly uninvolving. The acting is horrible, as well.

When I first saw the cover of this video, I had the sneaking suspicion that it might end up being one of those "so bad its good" movies that I absolutely love. Instead, it just ended up being bad. As far as a summary, take "Nightmare On Elm Street 3", add some even worse acting and production, add a killer that is one part Freddy Kruger, and one part Marcus Welby MD, and you've got this heaping pile of dung. In at least half the scenes in this movie, the lighting is so dark that its very difficult to even see what's going on. Fortunately for the viewer, by the halfway point you stop caring anyway, so perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. That was either a product of bad production, a very low budget, or possibly both. Also, there is this one cheesy song that is played a total of THREE times, including during the closing credits. And the song doesn't improve with multiple listens. Plot holes are everywhere in this film (too numerous to mention), and by the end you are just glad its over. Do yourself a favor, avoid this......!

Okay, so first of all, this movie was made in 2008. It shouldve been better since we have improved with special effects over the years. Horror fans seek something new and different than all this "Re-imagining crap we keep getting of a lot of classic horror films. Anyway, throughout this movie, I saw a lot of scenes and themes from older, better and classic movies. For example, our "Killer" is bacially a phsycopath man who goes around killing teens in twisted and nasty ways. Just like the "Saw" series, except the dude is already dead. What the hell? So he is a ghost that is miracurosly alive and in good shape coming back for his so called "Revenge" just like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. Burke is the killer's name and he has the Kruegar/Voorhees/Black Christmas theme to him. Next...we have our "wonderful" death scenes. Which are just like Black Christmas with the gouging of the eyes, ripping of the lips and tongue, hanging someone hanging from a string, chopping a girls head off...typical nasty crap. It is also very much Nightmare on Elm Street. The killer appears to his victims after the lights go out and he is able to transform into people's parents and make them re-live their worst nightmare. Just like Freddy Krueger.So I have made this clear that I hate this movie. Its plain stupid and retardedly messed up. I will explain more on the message boards.Directors...don't mess with the classics!!!! ~Sam~