Horror Movie Review: The Asylum (2015)

The Asylum (not exactly imaginatively titled but also known Exeter) opens in an unknown place with an unknown woman. She is injecting drugs before she shoots herself with a shotgun. It’s a shocking start that sets the tone for this paranormal horror movie set in the Exeter School of the Feeble Minded.

It was closed down after stories regarding patient abuse & poor treatments started to circulate.

Patrick (Kelly Blatz) has been volunteering to help renovate Exeter alongside Father Conway (Stephen Lang). However, when the priest goes away for the weekend, Patrick’s friends decide the asylum is the perfect place to throw a party!

Patrick tries to stop it from happening but his friends are a bunch of uninterested, uncaring idiots so the party goes ahead. Cue 15 minutes of teens partying, drinking, doing drugs & trying to bone one another.

The party finally winds down leaving just a handful of people behind. Patrick, his younger brother Rory (Michael Ormsby), Brad (Brett Dier), Reign (Brittany Curran) and a few others. They carry on drinking & talking utter rubbish before stories about the asylum’s history are shared.

Amber, excited about the paranormal potential of the site, talks the others in attempting to levitate Rory. It seems to work but Rory wets himself in the process so runs off into another part of the asylum in shame.

Patrick & Reign go after him & find him suffering from some form of possession. They tie him up & decide to call in Father Conway, something the others don’t want to do. All because of the amount of illegal drugs they have about the place.

So begins a group of teenagers attempting to exorcise Rory by using online instructions. It doesn’t go well…

The big mystery in The Asylum is just who the sprit/demon is & just what it wants. Don’t worry, it’s fairly obvious early on just who is involved.

An uninteresting & unexciting paranormal horror, The Asylum offers nothing new in an exhausted sub-genre. Ghostly goings-on & possession stories have been run into the ground. No matter the quality of acting, gory visuals & competent plot, you’ve seen it all before. Not that The Asylum actually has any of these.

The acting is sub-par with not a single character standing out. The early attempts to flesh them out fall way short. They are just the usual drunken/drugged up teens making stupid decisions. They have very little or no respect for the environment or asylum’s history.

There are some violent deaths but they are very uninspired. They also utilise awful looking CGI in the case of one particular hilarious moment.

The story is basic with attempts to throw in some shock moments having very little effect. By time the ‘big twist’ is revealed the movie has gone off the rails. Off the rails to such a degree that you won’t care one bit. The bad-guy’s motivation is so questionable that it just comes across stupid. The main lead is able to put it all together with very little information, it is just absurd.