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Ghost Canyon

'Asylum'
(Bruce Payne, Stephen Rea, Dimo Alexiev, Velizar Binev, et al / DVD / R / 2015 / LGF)

Overview: A veteran hostage negotiator's next call leads him to an overrun insane asylum. He soon finds that dark forces are pushing the patients to commit atrocities, and he may be the only one that can stop them.

DVD Verdict: Very hard to describe and follow, 'Asylum' (which is hardly the most original title for a "horror" movie ever retold), starts out with a priest and then cuts to these two guys who appear to be editing or adding special effects to a movie. The plot, as is such, is about an eleven-person riot squad racing to an insane asylum to quell a recent inmate outbreak and hostage situation.

They arrive, only to be caught off guard by a sudden barrage of insane patients. When they've finally fought off a wave, two of their squad members are missing, their communications return only static, and the doors are locked. They're trapped, of course. So, they break up into three teams to track down the lost members. The overlying trouble is that strange sounds and religious iconography suggest something beyond insanity has taken over the inmates.

Sure enough, a simple rescue mission quickly morphs into relentless life or death battles with possessed. When McGahey (Rea), a trained, rational hostage negotiator, discovers the ringleader of this possessed insanity is none other than his brother, it falls on him to stop nothing less than the opening of a portal to Hell. All though this mayhem, and the remainder of the movie, it shifts back and forth between the asylum and a mysterious voice over re: the two aforementioned editors making dumb comments about the movie which, BTW was supposed to be found footage, and the producer back in the US!

Confused? Well, I sure was and I watched it twice! I mean, at one point, these two editors, cracking in-house jokes back and forth between each other as if their lives depended on it, even referred to the great Stephen Rea as a "lesbian Bob Dylan"! Ergo, not the worst horror movie of its ilk, but an overused title, and underused Rea, and a plot that has seen better years means 'Asylum' was DOA, sorry. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1:78.1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

www.LGF.com





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