Asylum: DVD Review
The Movie:
A veteran hostage negotiator’s next call leads him to an overrun insane asylum. There he discovers that dark forces are pushing the patients to commit atrocities, and he may be the only one that can stop them.
If you read the synopsis above or look at the cover art your first impression might be a good one. Just from those two sentences it sounds like an interesting horror movie BUT that isn’t entirely what we get. The film starts out very dark and sinister and that got me really excited to see it since I really love horror movies but then the worst thing happened. They created a situation that is very similar to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and included characters that gave their own “comedic” (I say comedic but it wasn’t funny at all) commentary track. During the entire movie they talked and talked over what could’ve been a great horror film and that really bummed me out. It almost felt like the filmmakers were sabotaging their own film pointing out the silliness and mistakes throughout. The thing that kind of got me upset was that they made no indication in the synopsis that it would be this kind of movie and to me that kind of trickery isn’t cool at all. If they would’ve added a small blurb somewhere at least the film would be watched by an audience that got that kind of humor. Instead people will probably walk away from it feeling cheated. I kept looking to see if it could be turned off somehow but unfortunately it can’t. The thing that I would like to know is if the actors of the film knew that this was going to be done in the end because I would be extremely upset if I was them. I’m no filmmaker by any means but my advice would be to recut the film without all of the extra stuff and redistribute it with another name. If you’re reading this and you still want to watch it then more power to you. At least you’ve been given a heads up on what kind of movie this is. 2/10
Asylum is available NOW on DVD from Lionsgate
