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Doom Asylum (1987)
Doom Asylum (1987)
1987 | Comedy, Horror
5
4.7 (3 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The gore (0 more)
The acting & script (0 more)
Watching this may send you mad
This horror spoof tells the story of a couple who get into a car crash. She dies and he is presumed dead and sent to the local asylum (not a hospital for some reason!) for autopsy which he wakes up during and kills the 2 coroners. 10 years later the daughter of the woman who died in the crash and her friends visit the now abandoned asylum to see if the legend about a psychotic killer dressed as a coroner - the man from the crash. Whilst at the asylum they run into a weird all female punk band and they are all picked off one at time by the coroner...the gore is actually really good including a particularly nasty drill to the head and a toe snipping scene. The acting is awful as is the script but it's difficult to tell if that's by design as this is a send up of the slasher genre. Worth a watch for the gore but don't expect too much!!!
  
Investigation 13 (2019)
Investigation 13 (2019)
2019 |
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Characters – Layla Parrish is the owner of the asylum, she will welcome the guests in to investigate, give the warnings and the history to the building. Melanie is the leader of the team, she has put in the requests for the investigation, brings the team together and is the one trying to prove the most for her class. Jerod is the other lead on front of the cameras in the investigation and like the rest of the team, we are getting Ernie and Nate who are the generic cameraman, while Terry is the one operating the remote cameras.

Performances – Stephanie Hernandez in the leading role of the investigation team is fine, which is going to be said for the whole cast, nobody does anything standout and most just struggle to make the true impact needed to make us understand the fear they are going through. Meg Foster does give us the creepy landlady performance, which is mostly explaining what has happened before in the asylum.

Story – The story here follows a group of paranormal investigators that are looking into an abandon asylum in an attempt to redeem their own reputation after the last investigation went wrong. Well, where do we start with this one, for the most part this is everything we have seen in any and all paranormal investigation in an asylum movie, we get next to nothing original in this story, mainly because it is a location and story that has been done way too much before. We get the routine, set up the cameras, walk around a lot, watch the cameras, hear noises, before something big happens after one of the team goes missing. While this story does have an element which does come off original, it is the fact we have to get through the usual material to get here. We do get animation used to fill the back story, which is strange to watch at times, though it does give us the unsettling feeling the live action side lacks.

Horror – The horror side of this film does rely on how you react to people trying to investigate an abandon asylum, it isn’t something we haven’t seen before when it comes to the horror though.

Settings – The film is set in the asylum which is filled with the rooms we would expect to see, it does only have one way in and out, which does leave us wondering why they would agree to investigate a place without knowing the escape.

Special Effects – The effects are limited, we don’t need to many, with a lot of the scene that do involve the animation, which covers up any effects needed.


Scene of the Movie – The animation spices up the generic story.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – We don’t get much new for the paranormal investigation side of the film.

Final Thoughts – This is a by the book paranormal investigation in an asylum movie, with the exception of the animation filling in the history of the asylum, we are given nothing new to type of movie.

Overall: By the book paranormal investigation movie.
  
Out of the Shadows (2017)
Out of the Shadows (2017)
2017 | Horror
Story: Out of the Shadows starts as we follow a paranormal investigation team looking to recruit the only known survivor Carter (Kellogg) to join them as they search the answers about what happened on his famous activity tape.

With the team in place the teams sets up the cameras around the asylum with team member Cynthia (Morrison) getting the first does of activity in a communication from her father, whom went missing in asylum with Carter’s team. Using her as bait the team record her time inside the asylum as they look to explain the unexplainable.

 

Thoughts on Out of the Shadows

 

Characters – Carter is the lone survivor from a previous encounter inside the asylum, he goes back but could have his own motivation for this. Cynthia is searching for her father who went missing but the rest of the characters are just another mix of the crew you would expect on a paranormal investigation team.

Performances – The performances across the board are not the best, the crew does feel like it could be a real documentary crew at times but then other times its just a group of actors trying to overreact to everything going on.

Story – The story does have a good twist, which is the only interesting part of the story, it is nearly 90 minutes investigating the shadows with too many characters to follow, it gets difficult to follow the characters in the dark for the most part and as for the reasoning behind everything well, it doesn’t seem to have one.

Horror – The horror is a lot of jumping at the camera or activity happening behind the camera, it isn’t scary but will give you a forced jump.

Settings – The film could easily have only had one setting, the asylum but going back to the motel makes it feel like the evil could escape which does try to make it stand out from just a haunted asylum movie.

Special Effects – The effects are what you would expect for a found footage film, they work without being ground breaking.


Scene of the Movie – Welcome to the Devil’s Toy Box.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – The scares were too random.

Final Thoughts –This is a disappointing and mostly dull horror movie, the jumps are too random, the characters don’t make smart decisions and found footage only works in places.

 

Overall: Horror film to skip by the end.
  
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Dave McKean, Grant Morrison | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
8
7.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
I have not read too many of the DC Comics, but this one was really good. Batman is one of the few DC heroes that I like, so it was cool to see this side of him through the Joker's eyes.

Okay, so in this comic, the Joker is trying to turn Batman crazy by exposing him to all kinds of horrifying things, namely the villains he has put away.

We get Arkham Asylum's backstory. We learn that the owner, a man who had lived in the house before turning it into an asylum after his mother had died after going insane herself. After many years of trying to help those admitted into the asylum, he ended up going crazy as well and locked himself inside one of the rooms scratching a story into the ground with his fingernails. Gruesome, right?

I really enjoyed getting to see the patients in their natural state and seeing them trying to fight Batman and make him feel as they felt was strange, but really interesting.

The artwork is what really set this comic apart. It set the mood perfectly, capturing the creepy, haunted, and ominous tone of the asylum while still keeping a sense of beauty to it. All in all, it was absolutely stunning, if not unnerving.

I enjoyed the story, even if I was a little confused at first, but it all comes together in the end.

There will be some spoilers in this next bit. This comic comes full circle in the fact that it, the comic, the asylum, and the old Doctor Arkham, all foreshadow Batman's involvement in the asylum itself. He is the one to bring people in, deeming them insane, and bats are what drew Old Arkham insane. It was very well thought out.

Overall, I really enjoyed this comic book and I want to see if there are more that are told in this style!