The film opens with an 8 year old girl hearing shouting, walks out of her room to sit on the stairs where her 9 year old brother is already watching their parents having a screaming match. The Father ends up grabbing a gun & shooting himself whilst the Mother yells & begs for him to stop.Flash forward, the little girl is now all grown up & leaving the nest for college. Madison (Sarah Roemer) walks to her new dorm, the janitor warns her of this building which is disregarded by the security man.We soon learn from String (Cody Kasch) - a fun loving little geek - that the building was an Asylum back in the day where the Doctor performed experiments on teenagers with the belief he could cure mental illness brought on by childhood trauma.After that, one by one, each of the college kids are killed. Beginning with String - where he is choked by his own string... to Maya ( Carolina Garcia) where her abusive ex cuts her to death, & more, in what comes across as a hallucination to them.Meanwhile, Madison is dealing with the demons of her past, the suicide of her brother who attended the very same college - as well as trying to defeat the Doctor so the remaining students can live on.With odd & ominous rock music, sad background of each character & weird Doctor guy... This film was repetitive & sub par.The opening scene really drew me in & set the tone for the film, a dark & unsettling one. But it failed to impress me for a movie of this genre.The end was.. an end. It finished with Holt (Jake Muxworthy) & Madison escaping the dorm/asylum & running in the forest (cliché?) then Madison sacrificing herself for Holt only to release the spirits from the Doctor, thus ending his reign of terror & ultimately his existence. Then, after getting out of the forest, the two lovebirds casually hold hands & walk on the road like nothing life altering just happened to them...Overall, the development of the characters was lacking or rushed & the typical Frat guy Tommy (Travis Van Winkle) felt forced & the humour wasn't there despite them trying.Lacking character development - Forced cliché characters - Weird Doctor in bondage with bad make up & a big grudge on everyone just cause - Repetitive - Awful, awful musicEnd vote for this film is a 2Samm.Wise

When seeing a trailer for this on the net it looked pretty good! Considering that it contained all the clichés that have already been done in other horror films.***Contains Spoilers***It was pretty good! Dark & grim at the start with the creepy theme music & seeing photo's of all the patients back in the 1930's. The death scenes were pretty good & extremely gruesome! Which is what I loved! Also how the doctor brought them back to the time of their torment: Kills them & takes theirs soles! The ending was pretty good as well! Stabbing the doctor in the head then killing him releasing all of the soles he took!A pretty good horror film if you're a horror guru like me!10/10

When given a good script and actors, Ellis can make half decent, watchable movies, but I think he's basically doomed to make derivative, highly clichéd horror movies for the next ten years, with most of them probably going direct-to-video, before fading into deserved obscurity.Asylum is an annoying pastiche of past horror movies, drawing most of its influence from Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street. It's populated by tired stereotypes (the jock, the nerd, the slut, the weird girl, etc) who dutifully recite their two minutes of back story prior to their grisly death. Yes, it's nice to find any degree of back story whatsoever in a low budget horror movie, but the writing is so terrible and the characters are all so annoying that I just wanted them all to just shut up.The special effects and gore were fairly well done, which might make up for the terrible writing and directing, if you're obsessed with slasher movies. If all you want out of a movie is to see annoying, stereotypical teens butchered by a ghost, then you could do worse than this movie, but I'm not sure why you would waste your time.

If you got this movie expecting a $100 million production costs and over the top gore your going to walk away disappointed. If you are like me, a genre fan than you may be pleasantly surprised. The acting in this flick, along with production, and everything else was well above expectations. The script is decent and not as flawed as some would like you to believe. If you pay attention it all makes sense in the end.(This isn't a movie that requires 2-3 watches to get it). Good genre movies like this are constantly passed over by a lot of people(including myself) due to the backslapping phenomenon here at IBMD that ruins the rating system. You know the one where one person says, "Worst movie ever", then gets followed by 50 other sheep who can't think or form an opinion for themselves saying the same thing and voting the same way even though more then likely they never even saw the film. I wish I could say that this type of behavior will stop, but it never will and it works on both sides. If you notice, a lot of movies at IBMD will be rated terribly long before they are even released to anyone. Then a few people with backbone will stand up and eventually the ratings will rise. I see this with almost EVERY release that goes straight to DVD and even some big Hollywood releases.<---snip---> About this movie, It definitely DOESN'T deserve the rating it has. It should at least be in the 5-6 range. This isn't some ridiculous movie made by some idiot kid with no talent and a camcorder with a bunch of his no talent friends attempting to act. This is a low budget above par scare fair with good effects, a decent story, and great acting. Obviously a movie like this won't ever win any awards, but if you take it for what it is and your a genre fan this movie wont disappoint at all. I gave this movie a 7. I wish I could give it more, but it really is only deserving of a 5, maybe 6 at most. I added another star to try and make up for the pitiful IBMD zombies who refuse to think for themselves.For the Horror buffs who follow my reviews for their horror pics, I would give this one a watch. Don't expect a "classic" or "gem". Its just a "Decent horror flick" thats totally undeserving of IBMD's rating.