Asylum is a dreadful, insulting, misogynistic affair unworthy of cable TV. Do not hesitate to avoid it at all costs, and you will be saved the nausea it induces. After a promising start with auspices of campy intrigue, it becomes apparent that the filmmakers are woefully inept and incapable of crafting characters with real, human characteristics, much less any genuine comic value. What we get are one-dimensional figures with no sense of personal dignity or free-will, making the whole thing dreadfully predictable if not always boring. The story is contrived and makes little sense. I have nothing against contrived and senseless stories when accompanied by redeeming qualities in direction or character building, but herein lies not a single grain of inventiveness. The dialog is sometimes witty, and more often sub-par, formulaic banter that advances our plot but allows no greater insights into the motivations of the characters.
By far the most annoying element is the manner in which our wife, played sufficiently by Natasha Richardson, consistently makes the stupidest decisions possible, ruining any semblance of sympathy (absolutely essential for this type of film) she might evoke from the audience, and making a mockery of the central themes and ideas of sexual obsession emerging from female sexual boredom. Imagine Bunuel's Belle de Jour being directed by some fresh-out-of-film-school, Tarantino-fan-boy hack intent on making the next juicy psychological thriller, and you have an idea of what our finished product looks like, with neither legitimate psychological elements, nor any thrills to be found.
In summary of plot: Our respectable bourgeois wife and mother of darling boy Charley falls madly in love with an ax-murdering mental hospital inmate, and devolves into something not unlike that stereotypical impulsive and insecure teenage runaway who keeps going back to her sexy and abusive boyfriend for more sex and abuse. Even if our filmmakers knew how to show the confluence of female love and self-harming obsession in an appropriate light, the premise would still be ruinously goofy. I end up wondering if the filmmakers are even trying to mold a sympathetic protagonist, or rather are out to see how dumb and stereotypical they can make the film's only notable female character. So we get a helpless slave to passions, devoid of reason and self interest, and more easily manipulated than a plastic abacus, and bravo, you make James Bond look like Douglas Sirk in its empathy for sexually 'bored' women.
Ian McKellan is in this movie too, by the way, playing a psych doctor who amusingly devolves into a completely unbelievable Hannibal Lector type engineer of social disaster, routinely treating his patients like white mice by steering them into the most unhelpful situations, like ballroom dances between fiendish wife-killers and vulnerable wives. Only in bad horror films are the circumstances and settings in which characters meet each others for moments of dramatic intensity so embarrassingly contrived and unlikely.
Any time a film brings you to the point where you hope that all the fake and disgusting characters terminate their lives in suicide, you have an indication that the film has achieved nothing of particular value for those who think movies should be about humans. Fortunately, a key character DOES commit suicide, making for a healthy round of laughs from the audience. I won't tell you who, because that would be a spoiler, but if spoiling the ending would save you the price of admission, I'd consider myself a hero.
By far the most annoying element is the manner in which our wife, played sufficiently by Natasha Richardson, consistently makes the stupidest decisions possible, ruining any semblance of sympathy (absolutely essential for this type of film) she might evoke from the audience, and making a mockery of the central themes and ideas of sexual obsession emerging from female sexual boredom. Imagine Bunuel's Belle de Jour being directed by some fresh-out-of-film-school, Tarantino-fan-boy hack intent on making the next juicy psychological thriller, and you have an idea of what our finished product looks like, with neither legitimate psychological elements, nor any thrills to be found.
In summary of plot: Our respectable bourgeois wife and mother of darling boy Charley falls madly in love with an ax-murdering mental hospital inmate, and devolves into something not unlike that stereotypical impulsive and insecure teenage runaway who keeps going back to her sexy and abusive boyfriend for more sex and abuse. Even if our filmmakers knew how to show the confluence of female love and self-harming obsession in an appropriate light, the premise would still be ruinously goofy. I end up wondering if the filmmakers are even trying to mold a sympathetic protagonist, or rather are out to see how dumb and stereotypical they can make the film's only notable female character. So we get a helpless slave to passions, devoid of reason and self interest, and more easily manipulated than a plastic abacus, and bravo, you make James Bond look like Douglas Sirk in its empathy for sexually 'bored' women.
Ian McKellan is in this movie too, by the way, playing a psych doctor who amusingly devolves into a completely unbelievable Hannibal Lector type engineer of social disaster, routinely treating his patients like white mice by steering them into the most unhelpful situations, like ballroom dances between fiendish wife-killers and vulnerable wives. Only in bad horror films are the circumstances and settings in which characters meet each others for moments of dramatic intensity so embarrassingly contrived and unlikely.
Any time a film brings you to the point where you hope that all the fake and disgusting characters terminate their lives in suicide, you have an indication that the film has achieved nothing of particular value for those who think movies should be about humans. Fortunately, a key character DOES commit suicide, making for a healthy round of laughs from the audience. I won't tell you who, because that would be a spoiler, but if spoiling the ending would save you the price of admission, I'd consider myself a hero.