Director: Jay Woelful
Year: 2017
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After awakening in a mental asylum, a patient plans his escape to freedom and manages to successfully enter modern society only for his constant visions and psychological problems to continually manifest themselves in order to drag him back to the asylum and forces him to find out why.
For the most part, there’s not a whole lot to like with Asylum of Darkness. One of the strongest aspects is a really impressive, and somewhat disorienting, atmosphere that’s engaging and appealing. A majority of the first half has the ability to make it nearly impossible to tell what’s going on. The atmosphere found within this section of whether or not he’s really going through the insanity of the situation, with weird visions of people and distorted faces following his dreams, gives the film quite an odd start. Also, the rather odd manner in which this is jokingly referred to as a normal situation by the staff, despite the obvious discomfort of the visions, makes for an odd and chilling setup here. A few action scenes here aren’t that bad, and the gore and makeup effects for the creatures are pretty decent as well.
However, none of these factors can overcome the fact that there’s just no rhyme or reason for anything that transpires here. It just seemingly goes from one chaotic and seemingly unconnected sequence to another, that all supposedly feature his deteriorating mental state– yet nothing is really done about making sure it all relates to everything. Since he’s insane and supposedly living in a different person’s life, it is no excuse for why nothing here makes sense. Why does he go from being in the asylum and being treated, to suddenly living in a relationship with his wife, despite being two different people? None of this is explained. As for why they believe he’s the dead person and is able to suddenly become a different person: the flimsy nature that occurs here is begging for more of an explanation, yet it never occurs.
Likewise, the fact that the film is bland and lifeless doesn’t really do it many favors either. It takes far too long to get the switch going and features way too much down-time to really be of much interest. The endless scenes of him at the book-signing, trying to appeal to his wife’s good side to get her to trust him following the behavior switch, makes this one so dreary and dull that it sloughs along at a bland clip. And with a nearly two-hour running time, it really could’ve been put to far better use moving the pacing and tempo of this one along. These two issues here are in fact so crippling, that they manage to overcome much of what good this film accomplishes.
Overview: * 1/2/5
There's quite a lot of flaws to be had here which really do hold this one down. The few positives don't really have a lot of impact on this one overall, and it's the fact that these issues are really that impactful that this one tends to be worthwhile only to those who are hardcore fans of the creative side only.
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