Release Date: 07/15/2008
Label/Distributor: MGM/Fox
Rating: R (Restricted)
Retail Price: $26.98
Genre: Horror Cast: Mark Rolston,Cody Kasch,Jake Muxworthy,Carolina Garcia,Sarah Roemer
Director: David R. Ellis
DVD Video Options: AC-3,Color,Dolby,DVD-Video,Subtitled,Widescreen,NTSC
DVD Audio Options: English;Original Language,English;Subtitled,French;Subtitled,Spanish;Subtitled
UPC Code: 883904107804
Six unsuspecting college co-eds discover their dorm was once the site of a notorious insane asylum infamous for conducting gruesome lobotomy's on its teenage inmates during the 1930's. When the dorm begins to echo scenes from its torture chamber past the beautiful heroine (Roemer) questions her sanity and if she will make it out alive.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:-áHORROR/HAUNTED HOUSE Rating:-áR UPC:-á883904107804 Manufacturer No:-áM110780
Asylum
By Buzz McClain -- Video Business, 7/7/2008 3:08:00 PM
MGM/FOX
Street: July 15
Prebook: now
> Acceptable horror entry highlighted by cleverly mounted deaths a la the Final Destination series.
There are a few frights to be had in Asylum, directed by genre filmmaker David R. Ellis (Snakes On a Plane, Cellular and Final Destination 2), but that’s only after we get to know the “worst fears” of a half-dozen stereotypically diverse college students (including Travis Van Winkle of Transformers, Disturbia’s perky Sarah Roemer and Carolina Garcia) who attend a university that’s housed in a former insane asylum operated by a disgraced, presumed dead lobotomist (Mark Rolston). Not surprisingly, most of the students meet grisly deaths in the vein of each of their worst fears: a geek named String (Cody Kasch) gets—what else?—strung up; the resident Adonis (Winkle) is force fed to death by his raving mother; and so on. The gore is well delivered, the killings are fiendishly clever in a Final Destination sort of way, and the climax of leading lady Roemer confronting her own darkest fear is effective—it just takes a little too long to get there.
Shelf Talk: This undistinguished horror has a memorably mad title (there have been no less than a dozen with the same name released since 2000) and the presence of up-and-comer Roemer as the fight-for-her-life heroine going for it. Eerie box art of Roemer emerging from the walls of an institutional padded cell could set it apart from the other horror titles bottle-necking the new release shelf.
Horror, color, R (mature themes, violence, gore, language, brief nudity), 91 min., DVD $26.98
Extras: none
Director: David R. Ellis
First Run: L Int’l., April 2008, <$1 mil.
