Asylum follows around freshman, Maya as she moves into the dorm on her first day of college. As displayed in flashbacks, Maya lives with the pain of watching her father commit suicide when she was quite young. She quickly meets the standard assortment of college fodder, including the hacker, party guy, obnoxious RA and hot girl and they all start hanging out together in their new home away from home. The group’s new dorm comes with an omnious history. Several years prior to the college opening, the dorm building was actually and asylum, run by the evil Dr. Burke. The Doctor practiced very unorthodox methods of treatment on his patients, including performing lobotomies via two large spikes under the eye sockets to the brain. Eventually the inmates seized an opportunity to escape the asylum and killed the doctor in the process but, although dead, the Doctor’s ghost still stalks the building, feeding off the pain of the students he encounters.

The Evil Doctor is the main ghost in the films. He preys off of the sufferings of others and has the ability to pull extremely traumatic scenes from the childhood of his victims (which each person conveniently had!) and force them to relive the pain before killing them. I had a few issues trying to understand his purpose, however as the movie was a little vague regarding his motivation for killing and his abilities as far as what he could do while in spirit form. The actor,Mark Rolston was good in his role, however I didn’t feel the Doctor’s character was that deep or memorable overall.

The strong point for this film is the gore scenes. There are some Practical and CGI effects mixed in for variety. With the exception of one scene where the CGI did not hold up well at all, the effects were well executed. I really liked the first “jump” scene and the way it was executed. The cinematography in Asylum is also strong. There are a couple of flashback scenes that were well executed as well as a shower stall drowning sequence that looked great. The director, David Ellis (Final Destination 2) mixed in some black and white scenes to subtly reiterate that the dorm was haunted from decades before. It created an effect of the old building waivering between reality and the past world of the Doctor, which I felt was a nice touch.

The plot of Asylum is probably the area I felt detracted from the film the most. It was pretty straightforward with half a dozen steriotypical teens stuck in an abandoned asylum and being picked off one by one. The villian, Dr. Burke preys on their fears a la Freddy Krueger to feed off of their agony and then kills them with a pair of large lobotomy spikes. I enjoy “ghost house” genre movies as a whole and in my experience, most of these films are varieties of this basic storyline.

Clocking in at 93 minutes, there is some good, spooky atmosphere and set pieces without stretching the storyline out too thinly. I was entertained by Asylum, however, I can’t give a recommendation for this one without a few qualifiers. If you want nudity, plot twists, violence and/or gore of Saw-like proportions in your horror, then Asylum probably isn’t going to be the movie for you. If you enjoyed Ghost Story movies such as the House on Haunted Hill remakes, the 13 Ghosts remake and Death Tunnel (ok, well maybe I am the only one here who enjoyed Death Tunnel!), then go ahead and rent this one. It will be right up your alley.

Asylum is available courtesy of MGM Home Entertainment beginning on July 15th.

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