Dark Asylum

2001 "Terror is the only sane response."
4.1| 1h23m| R| en| More Info
Released: 08 November 2001 Released
Producted By: Shoreline Entertainment
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Asylum is a taut psychological thriller about a deranged fearsome killer running lose in an abandoned high security Asylum. Pitting the county psychiatrist Dr. Maggie Belham against the psychotic maniac, Dr Belham is trapped in a maze of corridors, and her only help is the janitor, Quitz who may in fact be a forgotten asylum inmate.

Genre

Horror, Thriller

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Director

Gregory Gieras

Production Companies

Shoreline Entertainment

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Dark Asylum Audience Reviews

ThiefHott Too much of everything
FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
djderka The basic plot is simple enough as are most "asylum" movie plots. An asylum is a perfect place for mayhem as there are plenty of abandoned ones around the world for set locations. Dark Asylum is well directed and written, and has overtones of Jean-Luc Goddard. How? Some scenes are cut and some events are not shown on screen, but cut out so that our minds can fill in the details. The shots and scenes are well connected. Opening jumps out at us with the cops going into the sewers to discover Trashers lair. There is one shot of him on the ground and cops and flashlights in the back ground with light columns. Would have been a pretty neat DVD cover.Lighting is superb, with great reflections. Larry Drake is great as The Trasher and reminds me of Thor from those 50's movies and a little Odd Job thrown in for good measure. Pretty decent job from super model, Paulina too. Overall very well crafted with some asylum surprises. The Trasher is caught in the beginning of the movie and sent to an asylum for examination...ha..as though. Maggie is called in to do the evaluation before midnight, only an hour away. The Trasher is intelligent, crafty and cunning which does reflect some true life situations. He figures out their actions pretty quickly.Anyway, he gets sent to the nut house and Maggie, a psych doctor, is sent to analyze him, and the surprise is: her daddy was a serial killer as well. The Trasher, well, trashes most of the security guards and doctors in the asylum and chases Maggie and Quitz, the janitor, throughout the entire facility. Of course this has been done before but, the director Georgory Gieras, has added some panache to the "asylum" genre, with good direction and script constructs.Larry Drake plays The Trasher with menacing delight and of course you get can't beat chasing a super model like Paulina Porizkova who plays Maggie. One major error was not getting Pauline out of her business pants suit into something much more revealing, showing at least legs, or cleavage, or both as this is mandatory in horror/thriller genres.Maggie hooks up with the janitor, Judd Nelson, who can't seem to decide if he is Steve Zahn or Marty Feldman, but being a geeky janitor he knows the asylum inside/out and does lead The Trasher on a wild somewhat of a maze chase through the asylum.Did everyone catch the homage to Cukoo's Nest? It was where The Trasher gained control of the loudspeaker system and plays Nest music and says, "Time for your medicine"...funny, and the movie needed a lot more of those kinds of punches. And there was an homage to Desperado, when the Maggie gets asked about her last name...buco..bocho..? as Steve Buscemi did at the bar in 1995 movie Desperado. Very clever reference.Of course cops are inadequate as in real life. Many times they are baffled, confused and unsure of what to do in a crisis situation as in Columbine, so this is not unrealistic. And of course, what would you do while being chased by some 300 lb maniac. Huh? Take him head on? or run? yeah, run!Several visceral scenes are cut as others have mentioned, which is curious. After all, it is a horror/slasher flick. The Trashser wants the key to get out. The janitor swallows the key. The next scene should be him being eviscerated for the key, but we never see it..whaaa? We simply see The Trasher with a bloody key. Maybe the director was working off the old Hays morality code from the 30's to the 60's. Or..or he is spoofing our expectation of seeing guts spilled over the floor. Hmmmm...I need to see the DVD extras.Overall though, a very high production value, good acting, nice maniacal killer, and the usual baffled cops actually make this an above average thriller. The Hungarians and Romanians seem to have good production crews which is why a lot of asylum movies are made there.I saw this On Demand TV and found it to be above average, but get Paulina out of those pants suits and into something hot, doctor or not she is a super model.Some folks panned this film as worst, bad, etc, but they have really not been to some "Horror festivals", like I have, with film entries shot on a cheap video camera, and with no lighting, plot, script, or direction, and just lots of meat counter entrails.
slayrrr666 "Dark Asylum" is a better-than-average, if still somewhat decent slasher.**SPOILERS**Following a rampage through the city, serial killer The Trasher, (Larry Drake) is caught and sent to Crestmore Sanitarium, bringing psychologist Maggie Bellum, (Paulina Porizkova) out to interview him. Meeting up with Dr. Conrad Fallon, (Jurgen Prochnow) the owner of the facility, the two decide to get to the bottom of what is driving him and causing him to commit the murders, to no avail. Managing to get loose, he goes on a violent rampage, forcing the prison to go into lock-down mode and trapping them inside with the freed killer. Finding out that prisoner Quitz, (Judd Nelson) managed to escape the slaughter, they soon become the target of the homicidal maniac and try to outwit him to get out of the prison.The Good News: This was a somewhat decent slasher entry. One of the better things about it is that there's a fantastic setting for a fantastic-looking chase. The last half of this is a great chase by the three through the asylum, utilizing plenty of great tactics on both-sides, from the cat-and-mouse games over the intercom to the shower-room confrontation that leads into the chase through the air-ducts and the spectacular counter to the discovery in the over-head pipes by destroying the roof, all leading together for some high-end fun. There's also a lot to really enjoy from these, as the film goes all-out being incredibly creepy, suspenseful and exciting series of scenes that make for a lot of fun with all the variations and versions that are shown within. It's really hard to pick one of them from within the asylum scenes, so there's so much to really love for it's action, suspense or thrilling encounters, and once it moves away into the sewers at the end, it's almost as good. The creepy setting is again kept, with the chase through the darkened sewers being really nice, the brawling confrontation with the killer in the pit of water being nice as well and the rather explosive finale providing some nice thrills. Even the opening, with the descent into the flooded sewers providing a ton of suspense and thrills makes for some really tense moments. The discovery in the flooded lair is excellent and gets a marvelous jump out of it. The last part to this is that there's a really imposing killer in here. He's a large, burly, imposing person who hulks over everyone else and really uses that to physically lord it over his victims. That leaves a great view of the killer here, which combined with the other factors makes up this one's best points.The Bad News: There wasn't a whole lot really wrong with this one. One of the biggest flaws here is that this one has an odd way of placing the kills around it's story. Nearly everyone is wiped out by the forty minute mark, which leaves the big chase between the groups with no kills at all, a really curious decision. It drags the pacing somewhat oddly and really seems put together weirdly. That also brings up the other flaw with the kills, the rather lame way we see them. There's two problems with it, and the bigger is that there's really no blood or gore in them. They're brutal, graphic and definitely should've had something in here, yet this one is pretty dry compared to what it could've been. We see merely violent aftermath, yet there's no oozing wounds or even arterial spray from some of the more violent ones in here. Also quite problematic is that some are even done at an angle that prevents a look at it actually happening even though we see what's being done. That alone is what's so aggravating about these, since it's got plenty of opportunities for much more yet there's little actually done. The last flaw is the questionable way this ends. There's no need for this to bring in the family history, especially since it brings the daughter into the mix when it didn't need to. It's quite weird to do this since it's hard to come up with a rationale for it's inclusion. These here are the film's flaws.The Final Verdict: A couple of really great parts and some flaws to it make this one a somewhat overall decent slasher that's watchable at best. Give this one a chance if you're into slashers in general or find this one interesting, while those who find the flaws in here too much should heed caution.Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence
Darkness876 This movie was truly terrifying for the first ten seconds, and then you see the killer and it just goes down hill. I don't know how an unarmed 400 pound tub of lard can take out whole swat teams with automatic weapons and i really don't care. This movie was boring, predictable and downright stupid. It plays partially off of the Halloween and Friday the 13th genres with an unstoppable killer who slaughters people for fun, however the killer is unable to create any fear and is only a joke. The thin plot revolves around a killer (the trasher) who escapes captivity in an Asylum and searches for a way out. The protaginist is a doctor whose own life and the life of her daughter is put into danger by the madman, who vows to kill her daughter upon his escape. Its ironic that the killer lives in a sewer because that is where this movie belongs, don't see this movie unless you too want to end up in an Asylum.
joeled2000 Well what can u say abt this movie?. Bad acting, predictable story, same crap as the other "Horror movies from 1990-2000". The killer looks like a big pig and isnt that scary. He got shot several times without any kind of bad injury(ohh yes he sew himself up). I really dont like this movie. If u wanna see real horror movies then i suggest u check the 70´s horror movies out. This one u can throw in the trashcan.