Asylum (2008)

"Once you're in, you can never get out"

Plot

A new college student discovers that her dorm was once an asylum for mentally disturbed teenagers who were subject to harsh treatments at the hands of the sadistic Dr Burke who tried to treat his patients by conducting gruesome lobotomies. It isn't long before she and her new friends break into an old restricted area of the building and awaken the spirit of the mad doctor who proceeds to terrorise them with memories of their troubled pasts.

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I couldn't get A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors out my head whilst I was watching Asylum. It's pretty obvious that the writers couldn't either because most of this dismal supernatural slasher film plays like a bad copy of it. The recent Boogeyman 2 did the same thing with a maniac killing teenagers in a hospital ward using their fears against them but at least it did it better. This one simply shifts the action to a college dorm but the killer is still a mad doc and for some reason he has supernatural powers. From the moment Dr Burke comes on the screen, I could sense that the guys who made this were hankering for some sort of horror icon or franchise. I've got one thing to say to them - it isn't going to happen anytime soon!

Asylum starts out decent enough with the group of freshman finding out that their dorm was once a mental asylum and this had potential for all sorts of weird goings on (like House on Haunted Hill for instance where the characters constantly see ghostly re-enactments of horrific torture scenes). But as soon as the mad doctor is revealed to be still lurking around, it all just goes to the dogs. Actually it went to the dogs before that with the introduction of some of the characters, all of whom have some painful back story that they are trying to hide. What are the chances that a group of six friends, all with troubled pasts, are put into the same college dorm as each other? At least A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors and Boogeyman 2 had the films set inside fictional asylums so that there was a reason for them all to be together.

Whilst it doesn't offer anything new and is happy to rehash ideas from elsewhere, director David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2 and Snakes on a Plane) at least handles the material well enough to make Asylum as engaging as it could be. Production values look polished enough to give the impression that this could have been a limited theatrical release, rather than a straight-to-video one. In fact, Ellis did go old school with this and got the film released in a small number of cinemas to try and drum up interest and get word of mouth to spread so it could open in more. Unfortunately, that relies on your film actually being good. Outside of it's genericness, Asylum's episodic structure, where one of the teenagers goes off on their own and is targeted by Burke, gets tiresome after a while. The set pieces are recycled from similar films but, outside of the obvious survivors, the script mixes it up when it comes to killing off supporting characters. Jump scares are aplenty and the film does make some of the kills messy enough to satisfy those looking for something a little bloodier than normal.

The main star of the show is Burke, the ghostly mad doctor. The script has him doing supernatural things like disappearing at will and conjuring up dream-like visions to kill his victims like Freddy Krueger but then in the next breath, it has some of the characters lock him out of a room by barricading the door and also take him down with a heavy object to the back of the head. Mark Ralston needs a new agent. He's got one of those instantly recognisable faces but one of those where you can't put a name to it. Well for all of you out there, he was Pvt. Drake from Aliens (the male marine who hung around with Vasquez, the bad ass female marine, and had acid blown into his face when an alien was shot at close range). Anyway, he's pretty dire in this but I can't really blame him when the script has him growl things like "give me your suffering" time and time again. The guy preaches about pain and suffering like Pinhead and even dresses up in some out-of-context S&M outfit towards the end.

Sarah Roemer is serviceable as the lead. Travis Van Winkle also has a few decent lines as the jock but the rest of the cast are just walking cliches. And this leads back to the same issues as I've covered - the script. There's nothing original about Asylum and you know it every time it rips off A Nightmare on Elm Street or House on Haunted Hill. Repackaged ideas can be done well if handled properly but they're not handled well here at all. Asylum is just too cheesy and doesn't know whether to play itself as a ghost story or a slasher and ends up in the messy middle with groan-inducing one-liners from the villain contrasting badly with some of the carnage and psychological torture on show.

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Final Verdict

Asylum is a poor supernatural slasher-by-numbers that retreads the same lousy routine over-and-over again and features one of the weakest wannabe villains of the 00s. It'll pass the time if you're in for an undemanding flick but it's the kind of film you'll forgot you ever saw and then in ten years time, you'll start watching it again without realising it.

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Asylum Director(s): David R. Ellis Writer(s): Ethan Lawrence Actor(s): Sarah Roemer, Mark Rolston, Jake Muxworthy, Travis Van Winkle, Ellen Hollman, Joel Heyman Duration: 93 mins