Movies
Asylum (V)
“Too bad to be funny and not gruesome enough to be disturbing, ASYLUM manages to be a late contender for worst film of the year. But, it just might pull it off.”
Another review here
I have a confession to make: I love all of the David Ellis movies I’ve seen. Final Destination 2 was probably the best entry in the series, having the best deaths and humor of the trilogy. Snakes On A Plane was a fun throwback to the Z-grade action films of the 80’s. And while I’ve never seen Cellular (or Homeward Bound II, though I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to watch it), I hear its at the very least, a decent time waster.
Late in 2007, Ellis quietly snuck out ASYLUM to a handful of theatres. And by a handful, I mean three towns, none of which are New York or L.A., the normal limited release cities. Luckily, or unluckily, enough for me, it managed to get released in Orlando of all places. From what I’ve been told, the marketing scheme of the film is very old school. They’re traveling with prints, only picking two or three cities at a time and hoping to drum up word-of-mouth interest. Unfortunately, that only works if you have a good film, which this isn’t.
Sarah Roemer (Disturbia, Wristcutters: A Love Story) stars as Madison, a college coed whose family has a history of mental illness and suicidal tendencies. Moving into a newly opened dorm at Richard Miller University, she acts mopey and distant as every male in the building hits on her, while she laments over the recent suicide of her brother. After warming up to a few of her fellow students, they explore the half-renovated building, have a few shots of whiskey and indulge each other with their stories of childhood trauma.
Madison suspects theres something wrong with the building after she experiences a few haunting visions. After a little investigating, she discovers that the dorm used to be an asylum for troubled teens, headed up by a deranged doctor who tortured his patients instead of curing them. There are these black and white flashback sequences, scattered throughout the film, which serve as the exposition to what actually happened. Well, they’re all in black and white except for one. And I honestly think someone just forgot to tell the film lab to change that one. It makes sense since there was basically no thought put into any other aspect of the film.
The rest of the movie is pretty standard: Doctor ghost finds student, kills student and moves on. Lather, rinse, repeat. We’ve seen it all before. Except, we’ve seen it done much better. Does the plot seem familiar to you? That’s because its a mixture of The House on Haunted Hill remake and A Nightmare on Elm Street. And as you get further and further into the movie, you realize how much ASYLUM rips off from both of these films.
It even gets to the point where the villain talks and maneuvers like Krueger, to terrible results. The students are all killed in a dream-like hallucinatory trance, with each of their deaths focusing on their past and fears. I guess that’s pretty convenient for one student named “Strings”, who gets in the exact way you’re probably thinking. The doctor has that all-to-familiar cackle, accompanied by puns that sound like they came out of a rejecting Tales from the Crypt episode.
Screenwriter Ethan Lawrence, which to the best of my knowledge has only written some TV scripts, doesn’t know what he’s doing. He seems to just throw stuff up on the wall and see if it sticks or not. The dialogue is far beyond the point of so-bad-its-good territory, leaving you wanting to put the film on mute and add your own dialogue. Because, quite honestly, you could make something better up on the spot. When you have a character answer yes to “Are you a bottle blonde or just naturally stupid?”, you know it’s gone beyond the point of return. I could even forgive a couple of bad lines but its the whole movie.
The acting, much like the script, is pretty dire. It ranges from awful… to more awful. Sarah Roemer must’ve filmed this before Disturbia, because there’s no way her agent would have even suggested this heaping pile of garbage. The characters are written very stereotypically, on top of the story being a half-assed rip-off, so its not surprising that no one could give a good performance.
Too bad to be funny and not gruesome enough to be disturbing, ASYLUM manages to be a late contender for worst film of the year. But, it just might pull it off.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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