Okay, back from the dead like one of
the many terrible Return Of The Living Dead sequel, we're going to
take a break from the Midnight Horror Collection this time. Instead,
what's on the block is a movie on Netflix called “Asylum”. Why?
Because why should I use a service like Netflix to watch good movies
that I might actually enjoy when I can use it to watch bad movies and
get drunk to them? Also, for those of you that are interested, I did
try to do an audio recording of a different movie review with Julie,
but realized three things after the fact: 1. I have a terrible
speaking voice. My joke about it sounding like cow shit going
through a meat grinder actually isn't that far off. 2. There are
large portions of time when I do this with other people where we
don't talk about the movie or anything going on in it at all. And 3.
Trying to do an audio recording of this just means I'd have to sit
down and transcribe what was said into blog form anyway. So fuck
that noise, on with “Asylum”.
Credits and creepy
music over old pictures from inside an asylum. At least they seem to
have a basic grasp of how to start a horror movie. Then again, the
credits have been the highlight of more than a couple of the movies
I've talked about so let's not get our hopes up. Getting straight
into the action, there's a couple kids (a boy and a girl) standing on
the stairs listening to their parents fight in a different room.
Looks like they can see into the living room where their fighting and
mom is trying to get dad to go back on his meds. Dad is complaining
about something or someone coming for him. But they only want him so
they'll leave mom and the kids alone if he's not there. Which ends
with a self-inflicted gunshot to his head right in front of his
entire family. I suppose, in real world terms, that's better than
turning the gun on everyone else first, but still gotta think the
invisible monsters he was fighting get the points for that one
considering how messed up his kids are likely to be from it.
I guess it was a
dream/memory 'cause next we see a fairly good looking college girl
(“Madison”) waking up when her mom drops her off. Who's mom
drops them off at college? Mom doesn't seem to want to let her go,
but since they pretty much say older brother Brandon is dead to, you
can kinda see her not wanting to let the last of her family out of
her sight.
Hey, you know that
crappy Dave Matthews Band sound of music and other crap people in the
90s tried to pawn off as the type of music college kids listened to?
Imagine an even blander, more generic sound of that. That's the
music playing on this stereotypical college campus. Seriously,
nothing but stock photo city so far. Including an old creepy looking
repairman/janitor/whatever and an over-zealous rent-a-cop. The
repair guy says the new dorm Madison is moving into is haunted.
Since it's the old asylum from the pictures in the credits and only
half renovated, I'm going to guess it probably is.
Madison makes her
way through the dorm up to her room only to find some scuzzy-douchey
looking guy standing in her doorway drawing something. I guess
that's slightly better than if he were shirtless playing an acoustic
guitar, but either one would fit him nicely. Madison does what I
think we all would like to do in that situation and pulls out her
mace (although she stops short of actually spraying him which I don't
think I would have in that situation) in order to get him to move out
of the way. He creepily stares at her as she goes in. In real life
that'd be stalker behaviour, in the movie he's probably going to end
up the love interest.
So mom gave
Madison a present with a note saying “Brandon would have wanted you
to have this” and it turns out to be a necklace. Putting it on and
looking at herself in the mirror, Madison is suddenly choked by the
necklace which has become barbed wire and has to rip it off. I'm no
expert, but with a history of mental problems in the family like she
has, that might be a warning sign since, as soon as it's off her
neck, it turns back into a regular necklace.
More crappy music
plays and we get to the mandatory orientation. Mandatory
orientation? I guess that's a thing at this college. Also, go
figure, scuzzy-douche is there and introduces himself to the girl who
was so disgusted by him she almost maced him in the middle of a
brightly lit, witness filled dorm hallway. For some reason she
doesn't finish the job but instead introduces himself and continues
to stand by him as Super-Jock shows up to tell Scuzzy-Douche that
“there are some hot fucking bitches in this place” before looking
over at what turns out to be (when she turns around) a rather slutty
looking blonde and saying “you've got really nice tits”. Nothing
but class and winners all around and worth noting that he hadn't
actually seen her tits yet when he said that to her. She was into
his rather forward approach, though, since she decides to stop
talking to the guy she was standing with before and come over to join
our motley crew of ghost fodder. Madison takes this time to find
some scrawny, nerdy looking loser (who also turns out to be only 16)
and go introduce herself to him. His name is String because he...
plays with string a lot. Also, out of nowhere in this so far
all-white school for the master race, there's a Hispanic girl named
Mya that... just showed up and everyone goes along with it. Yay
first day of college... I guess.
The grad student
councillor shows up and starts to do his bit, with Super-Jock trying
to be funny and talking over him. This guy also looks like a pretty
huge douche and even goes by the nickname “Rez” but he does make
the plot point that this is the first group of students to live in
this building in over 60 years. Then the tour starts as more crappy
music (possibly the same crappy music as before since I'm betting
they only bought the rights to one song). Three things to point out
here: the tour group has suddenly devolved from probably around 50
people to just the main six; some of the students that were at
orientation are already in the parts of the dorm (TV room, poker
table, etc) that the tour is going through; and Rez makes a point of
talking about the “brand new, unbreakable glass” between the hall
and the gym area. I'm guessing that's a set up for something later.
Mya shoots down
Super-Jock, but the slutty blonde (who only now introduces herself as
Ivy) is all for it. This being a movie that seems to be following a
cookie-cutter approach to story, I'm guessing we see her naked within
half an hour and dead within five minutes of that. Also,
Scuzzy-Douche is named Holt and Ivy is all over him too but she
figures Madison wants him so I guess she backs off a bit. They come
to the bordered off section of the dorm and it turns out Rez is the
only one with the key since no one is allowed in there. The lights
flicker once and everyone goes off on the next part of the tour.
Later that night,
Madison is wandering the halls and finds a picture of her brother in
a trophy case. This being in the middle of a thunderstorm that
showed up after a completely cloud free day, she hears someone crying
further down the hall and goes to investigate. Naturally, it's her
dead brother who talks to her about not fitting in and being just
like their dad before shooting himself in the ghost head. Of course
when her crazy-ass looks back, he isn't there because he's already
dead. Sign number two that something might be wrong with her.
Right after this,
Madison decides it's time to go interact with her group of hastily
cobbled together college stereotypes and Super-Jock pulls out a
bottle of tequila and a string of “triple XL” condoms (he
literally says the line “I'm kinda hung... nicely”). He's really
cementing himself in the role of “first person I want to see killed
in this movie” with his continued dickitude. Mya this time joins
in on the teasing of String by Super-Jock, but he takes a big swig of
the bottle and gains acceptance from the group. He then goes on to
fill in everybody on how this new dorm of theirs used to be a mental
asylum. Going online to show everyone the research he did into the
place, String grabs Holt's laptop even though Holt tells him it's
“got a security password”. This is no problem for String since
he's apparently the “kid that crashed eBay”. Not sure that's how
you're supposed to do product placement, eBay, but good try.
Everybody gets a kick out of this fact when he backs it up by
breaking into the laptop in two seconds and begins explaining that
the place was run by a crazy doctor that did a bunch of lobotomies
through the eye sockets and a bunch of other torture stuff on his
teenage patients. Ivy makes a point, out of nowhere, of saying
“scary stories are sexy”. Betting it's fairly soon she's naked.
The crazy doctor, having been discredited, started killing his
patients until they led an uprising and killed him (the standard “his
body was never found” tag is attached as per generic horror) which
leads to the question: why was he still allowed to be performing
operations on his patients after being discredited and having a
psychotic breakdown? You really dropped the ball on that one,
medical community of 60 years ago.
Rez shows up and
says no drugs or booze in the dorm, then leaves. This and the rest
of the story convince everyone they need to go over to the abandoned
side of the building. String hacks through the lock that only Rez
has a key for and away they all go. Funny part of the movie so far:
after Super-Jock literally knocks a door off its hinges and onto the
ground, he tells the others to be quiet and someone, I think String,
calls him on it. Otherwise it's just standard kids poking around a
haunted house stuff and calling on the ghosts. Also, there's a
prosthetic leg in there because why not?
They find the
doctor's office and start looking through the files. Never actually
pausing long enough to let you read anything in them, they just scan
over the pages and have Madison say “my god, he really was a
psychopath” and expect you to take her word for it. This coming
from the girl that's having delusional breaks from reality as it is,
but we'll leave that for now. While she's reading the files,
however, everyone else wanders off leaving Madison to go searching
for them alone. She's found by rent-a-cop and makes up the story
that she “heard someone screaming and the door was unlocked” so
she went in to check it out. Rent-a-cop is more concerned about
getting her out of the off limits section than following up on her “I
heard someone screaming” story, but whatever, we all know it was a
lie so we'll just let it go since we're a third of the way through
the movie and nothing supernatural has happened yet.
Everyone
else is fine, by the way. They're all sitting back in the common
room not even worried about where Madison went. They're happy she
covered for them even though they seem to have forgotten there were
six of them when they went exploring in the first place. Rez happens
to be walking by right at this time and rent-a-cop chews him out
because there's not supposed to be any students in the abandoned
section. Turns out there are three
key
cards for the door (Rez gets one, rent-a-cop another, and creepy
handyman the third) so Rez is a liar. He's also high on my list of
people I want to see killed. Not the least of which is because he.
Very suddenly and without provocation, grabs String like he's about
to start hitting him or throwing him around or something when String
steps in to defend Madison. Super-Jock actually comes to the rescue
by grabbing Rez the same way he grabbed String and we're given a nice
look at how, in a truly anarchist society where there are no rules
and no government or other body to enforce order, the physically weak
will be preyed on by those stronger and so on up the chain of
dominance. Just kidding. I mean, that stuff actually happens in
this case, but it's totally unintentional and I just made that up.
Sounded like something from a stereotypical college class, though.
Madison goes to check on String, who has run to his room, only to
find him packing up to leave and on the verge of tears. She
reassures him that everyone thinks he's cool and that he's smarter
than “the rest of us put together”. You can just see the look in
String's eyes 'cause he thinks he's going to end up getting laid out
of this and then the crushing defeat in them when she adds “you
remind me of my brother”. It's really sad and I shouldn't laugh
'cause I've been friend-zoned almost as quickly, but I still do. He
decides not to pack up and leave right that instant and she goes back
to the rest of the bunch.
Thoroughly defeated in his attempt to have sex in real life, String
turns to the lonely nerd's most faithful companion, internet
pornography. I assume, anyway, we don't actually see what he's
looking up on the computer 'cause the lights go out and a disembodied
voice starts telling String he “knows things about [String's]
past”. That's a bit of a mood killer when all you're looking for
is some “alone time”. After being transported back into the
green-lit room from his childhood, String's drunken mom stumbles in
with a bottle in her hand and wearing not a lot more than a T-shirt
and bathrobe. She then goes on a drunken psychologically abusive
rant that ends with her voice changing to that of what I assume is
the ghost of the doctor and saying he's going to kill him. The
doctor himself then takes the place of his mother and starts talking
down to String about “the pain he suffered” and talks about the
time String tried to hang himself. It's at that point the doctor
puts his hands on String and suddenly the string String had been
playing with gets larger and longer (ha, it's a joke about the porn
he didn't get a chance to watch) and wraps around his body and neck,
killing him.
Next morning, everyone but Madison and String are playing poker,
when Madison comes in and asks where String is. Going to look for
him, she sees a ghostly figure in a lab coat walking across the
hallway and disappearing. Remember, family history of seeing things
and again she doesn't say anything to anyone about what she saw just
goes and investigates herself. Getting to the hallway she saw the
guy in, she sees the door leading into the asylum close and decides
that's enough investigating and knocks on String's already open door.
It swings open and she sees him hanging there, tied up and dead.
She screams and runs to get help. This is where the sense ends
since, when she comes back with rent-a-cop and other rent-a-cops,
they also decide to bring with them Rez and everyone else from the
group to come take a look at the dead body. That... seems like
something that isn't likely to happen. Oh, and of course when they
get to String's room, his body isn't there anymore. Madison is
convinced she actually saw him in there, so rent-a-cop does the sane
thing after hearing String was on the verge of leaving and says
they'll check with his parents to see if he went home. Holt (aka
Scuzzy-Douche) decides to jump in on Madison's side and calls
rent-a-cop a “glorified security guard” and tries to tell him how
to do his job. Rent-a-cop's rent-a-cop buddy reacts the way anyone
in their position would to that by saying “I'm going to pretend you
didn't say that”. Likely his only line in the movie since they go
off to look for String likely never to be seen from again (original
rent-a-cop will probably be back, these other two... probably not).
Super-Jock is now working out in the gym with the unbreakable glass
(shirtless of course because it's not like anyone else might want to
use those without having his sweat on it). Then goes, still
shirtless, to talk to Mya who is studying in the room across the
hall. After shooting him down again and asking if Super-Jock (I
finally heard his name and I guess it's “Tommy”) didn't get
enough attention from his mom as a kid, Tommy says “if there's one
thing I don't want to talk about it's my mom”. And then goes on to
rant about his mom and how he used to be fat. Mya seems to be at
least warming up to him after it, though, so I guess opening up about
your deepest insecurities and pain to a girl you met literally the
day before is a good ice breaker? Must be since she turns around and
tells him that her ex used to beat her up and she doesn't want to
talk about it. Then she goes on to talk about how she doesn't let
people get close to her because she's afraid they'll learn her secret
to a guy that she just met the day before. Really? These two have
these big dark secrets they're trying to keep from the world and they
just talk about them like it's nothing? At least Will Ferrell in
Austin Powers took three questions before giving out Dr. Evil's
plans, these guys take just one “what do you mean?” and they're
spilling their guts. And not in the way you'd expect halfway through
a horror movie.
Hey
look, the build-up to a shower scene. But it's Madison instead of
Ivy that's about to get naked so there's a twist. Uh oh, looks like
the drain isn't working and the shower won't turn off. Also, the
shower is apparently totally water-tight and fills up to her knees
within ten seconds of being on which are two things I have trouble
believing about the showers in a dorm in a renovated mental asylum.
Oh, and the door won't open. We do get to see some underwater T&A,
though. Both T and A and, if you don't blink, maybe even some
underwater full-frontal. Go figure that the wholesome looking
good-girl main character would get naked before the slutty looking
disposable friend. The shower is completely full of water at this
point, but we cut to outside in the bathroom and her screams for help
are clear like they're not underwater at all. Oh yeah, the shower
and bathroom are attached to her dorm room. Meaning that each dorm
room has it's own bathroom. Combine that with the implication that
they're all one person rooms as well (why else would Madison have
found String instead of his roommate?), plus how nice and clean the
rooms are and, given the only thing I know about living in dorms is
what I've gathered from TV and movies and one friend that lived
there, you've sold me on living in the place haunted or not.
Seriously, this dorm seems to kick a lot of ass. Private bathrooms
and
unbreakable glass in the gym? If I wasn't already finished
university I'd sign up for next year. I know there's at least one
room available.
Back to the movie. Ivy comes in and finds he hugging her knees in
an empty shower instead of swimming to stay afloat in a full one like
she just was. Madison says it wouldn't turn off, but Ivy turns it
off without a problem. Another sign there's something wrong in
Madison's head or actually spooky asylum stuff? Doesn't matter
'cause now it's time for the two of them to open up about their
secret tragedies. Naturally, since it's in Ivy's nature, it starts
off with Ivy saying that Madison's brother, who she sees in a picture
beside the bed) is gorgeous. This leads to Madison talking about how
he died a year ago and the two bonding over not being crazy since it
turns out Ivy used to (or possibly still does since she says “it
feels good”) cut herself. I'm also not being an insensitive dick
with that last line (okay, I probably am, but for different reasons)
since that's pretty much what Ivy says word for word (“why show
me?” “because I'm not crazy... and neither are you”).
It's night again, and now Mya gets a knock on her door. Turns out
to be Rez just “checking in on everybody” 'cause they're all
freaked out about String and stuff. You know, checking in on
everybody by bringing a bottle of wine to drink with Mya. Just the
way he's talking makes him rise above Tommy (for now) in people I
want to see dead soon. A few glasses later, their laughing and Rez
is sharing a story about how he got locked in a storage closet naked.
He then awkwardly tries to transition that into hitting on Mya.
This does not go well for him. She starts out politely hinting that
she wants him to leave. He decides this is a good time to force a
kiss (and more) on her. She, quite rightly, grabs and crushes his
balls a bit when he won't stop. That gets his attention, although
his parting shot is “you just messed with the wrong person”.
Lucky for Rez it seems Mya won't get the chance to file any charges
against him 'cause the lights flicker and she's transported back to
Stereotype City. Or at least her old apartment where mariachi music
is playing and everything is decorated the way a white person with no
contact with anyone of any other culture and a severely racist
upbringing would think a Mexican apartment would be decorated. Her
scumbag ex-boyfriend is there, of course, and starts yanking her
around by the hair before pulling a switch blade on her and throwing
her into a mirror. He becomes the doctor and scalps her. I'm not
sure whoever wrote this has their stereotypes quite right.
Now
Madison is looking up “insanity” on Wikipedia. I paused the
movie and checked, and it turns out the page she's looking at, though
definitely Wikipedia, is NOT
the Wikipedia page on insanity. Though it does use the same picture
at the top of the article so I wonder if maybe that was the actual
page before some edits and a formatting change? Hard to tell but
props to them for at least knowing that the only way anyone in
college researches anything is by using Wikipedia. Holt shoes up to
talk with her and asks what she's doing. Madison, instinctively,
closes down her browser and answers “nothing, just... messing
around”. Now, not to start stereotyping as bad as this movie does,
but whenever anyone asks anyone what their doing on the computer when
they're looking at a blank desktop and the answer is “nothing”
(not even the “just messing around” part), the real answer is
ALWAYS
“looking at porn and masturbating”. In fact, no matter what the
answer they give you is, if they're sitting there with a blank
desktop on the computer screen, you can bet they were looking at porn
before you walked in to interrupt them. Holt, obviously missing the
fact Madison wants some “alone time” (even though in this one and
only case she was looking up something important... likely before the
porn), tries to get her to come with him to look for String. She
refuses, and then starts to talk about the “really weird stuff”
she's been seeing and tell him about her dad and brother shooting
themselves. To a guy she met three days ago. When she says “maybe
I'm just like them” i.e. “crazy”, Holt comforts her by saying
“not even close”. Remember, he's only known her for three days
and she's confessed to seeing weird things including String tied up
and dead when no one else saw it. I'm going to go out on a limb here
and say he actually thinks she is bat-shit insane, but is banking on
the old “the crazy ones are better in bed” rule and rolling the
dice on her sleeping with him before she goes totally nuts.
Of course, in his own words, the possibility of her being crazy
because it runs in her family “doesn't matter because [she's]
talking to a recovering drug addict”. Wait, what? I get that this
is the only place in the history of the entire world where everyone
shares the deepest, darkest experiences and fears with everyone else
they meet in less than a week, but how do those two even compare let
alone one cancel out the other? But fuck logic, we've got an
anti-drug story to tell here. Turns out Holt “used to do a lot of
drugs” and was supposed to be watching his little brother one time.
After “shooting up with heroin” he heard his brother fall around
into the pool. Holt jumped in, ripped through the pool cover, and
performed CPR, but it was too late; he killed his little brother.
Again: wait, what? That pretty much sounds like he did everything he
could possibly do to save the kid. A fact made doubly impressive
considering he was on smack at the time. I mean, I've never done the
stuff myself, but I've seen Trainspotting and know that heroin is a
“downer” so Holt leaping into action like that... fuck, I've been
completely sober and not bothered to answer a call for help from my
siblings until the show I was watching went to commercial. Granted
there wasn't a life threatening situation involved, but you get the
point.
Creepy
repairman Mackie shows up outside Madison's room and says it's “too
late to stop the doctor”. After she chases after him and Holt
chases after her, he goes on to talk about the ghost of the doctor
roaming the halls. Holt tries to get Madison to come back to her
room 'cause he was really
close to getting some survivors guilt pity sex, but she wants to stay
and listen. Apparently the doctor only goes after “troubled souls;
like you and your friends”. Mackie leaves and the lights flicker.
The next morning, rent-a-cop tells everyone that the only two people
missing from the dorm are String and Mya. Rez says he was “just
talking” with Mya in her room even though he was the last one to
see her. Tommy gets in another Super-Jock comment of “shut the
fuck up, you're hitting that shit?” in the middle of a serious
conversation, but the main point is Mackie's hat was found in the
abandoned section but no Mackie. Rent-a-cop makes promises of
finding the missing kids and getting to the bottom of it, then
restricts everyone inside the dorm where two people have already gone
missing mysteriously in three days. Not saying that's the reason he
didn't make it onto the force, but it probably didn't help.
Madison comes to the conclusion that maybe it's Mackie that's been
killing people and just using the legend of the doctor as a cover.
Even Holt calls bullshit on that, but no time for argument because we
need to cut to that night and Tommy working out again (shirtless, of
course). This time the doctor does show up. Go go unbreakable
glass! Not quite yet. Tommy gets sent back to his kitchen where his
obese (in his words from before his “whole family is obese”) mom
is bringing him another plate full of food. She tells him he hasn't
been eating enough and he isn't going anywhere until he eats
everything. They argue and she says, word for word, “I will not
love you if you get skinny”. What. The. Fuck. She then becomes
the doctor who shows his physical dominance over Tommy (remember the
lesson with him, Rez, and String from before?) by lifting him up by
the throat and continuing the verbal assault on him before throwing
him on the table, crawling on top of him, and pinning him to the
table by stabbing him through the wrists (conveniently crossed behind
his head on top of each other) with a carving knife. Also, the way
the scene is shot and the looks on Tommy's face through it, you kinda
get the feeling you're watching a rape. It's not really horrifying,
just disturbing for entirely different reasons than a horror movie
should invoke. So yeah... the doctor starts cutting off Tommy's
tongue and then his lips and generally mutilating him. Doesn't show
him killing him, but it's implied.
Cut
to Madison and Holt sitting on a bed and getting close while talking
about the weird things that have been going on and how Mackie might
be a psychotic killer. Time for them to kiss, obviously. They start
getting into it and suddenly the asylum decides to cock-block
Scuzzy-Douche by turning the lights out and slamming and locking the
window. It's enough to get them to stop, get out of the room, and
see that the rest of the dorm is without power too. Although when
confronted with the obvious “where is everyone?” question, they
decide to go check downstairs rather than knock on someone else's
door. Why? Because we've already used the lines “I won't love you
if you get skinny” and “you being crazy doesn't matter because
I'm a recovering drug addict” so fuck logic, that's why. Finding
that the door to the stairs is locked, Madison decides to call Tommy.
Not someone like rent-a-cop or even Rez who might have a key or at
least some semblance of pseudo authority in this place, her
Super-Jock friend. That's gotta be a blow to Holt's ego. In a time
of crisis the girl he's hitting on has the immediate reaction of “I'm
going to call this other guy I know”. For no reason at all,
there's no signal but they see that the light is on in the gym (but
nowhere else) so they wander through the dark hallway to check that
out never once thinking that there might be a problem since, you
know, everywhere else has lost power. Given what's been going on in
the past three days, I think it's safe to say that, with the power
out to the building and the doors downstairs locked for mysterious
reasons, the smart thing to do is not
to go looking into the one room that has lights on.
They find Tommy, still alive for a second, choking on his own blood
with the doctor standing over him. Tommy dies and the doctor turns
to come at them. Thankfully, Mackie is standing behind the doctor
and hits him with a shovel. I'm almost halfway through a 40 of rum
and even I can point out that A: if he's some psychotic ghost, a
simple shovel shouldn't bring him down like it does, and B: if Mackie
was back there the whole time, shouldn't he have maybe used that
shovel beforehand to save Tommy? Although maybe he just got tired of
his Super-Jock schtick like I did and wanted to see him offed, too.
Can't really blame the guy.
Anyway, all three of them (since Mackie caught up to them in an
instant) run and hide in a supply closet while the doctor walks after
them. The doc taunts them, calling Mackie by name, and then goes of
to find someone else to kill. Everyone breathes for a moment and
Mackie tells the story about how he used to be a patient at the
asylum in it's last days. He was even the one the doctor was
performing a lobotomy on when the other patients rose up and killed
the guy so we get some flashbacks of enraged teenagers rescuing an 11
year old Mackie with lobotomy spikes in his eyes from the doctor.
The former patients then string the doctor up in one of the torture
contraptions he'd used on them and one girl draws the long straw and
gets to stab the picks into the doc's eyes. Now, they only show her
doing it (and then all of them walking away to leave him to suffer),
but either the rest of them took turns doing it afterwards or she won
the goddamn lottery 'cause you gotta think they ALL wanted to be the
ones to stab him in the eyes. Young Mackie finds a drain pipe to
crawl through to get out while everyone else runs out the front door,
and then we're back to the present.
The decision is made that, since they can't get out through the
stairs, they'll use Mackie's key card (good thing Rez was lying when
he said he had the only one) to go over to the asylum side and get
out through there because I guess ghost magic to lock the doors in
the dorm doesn't work over there. Fuck it, less than 20 minutes
left, keep rolling. Ivy is wandering through the halls on her own
talking about it being “so messed up” that the power's out.
Lucky for her it's the other three that get to her before the doctor
and she starts running along with them rather than questioning.
Suddenly they have flashlights (something they said they needed to
get but were never shown getting) and are in the asylum side still
running for their lives. Ivy still doesn't know what's going on.
The doctor shows up because, you know, he's a ghost that haunts the
entire place not just the dorm side and goes after Mackie to “finish
what he started”. Rather than try to help the only guy that knows
the layout of the place, Madison, Holt, and Ivy decide it's time to
run away on their own. Way to be dicks. Although it turns out to be
a good thing since Mackie dies two seconds after they leave him.
Also, Ivy gets left behind because her needlessly short skirt isn't
as easy to run in... I can only assume since they were all in a group
before but she's the one that gets separated and trapped by the
doctor.
Even from the start Ivy's flashback is unsettling. A spotlight is
shining in her eyes and then she turns around to see a child's bed
with a prominently displayed sign saying “daddy loves Ivy” on the
wall. Yeah... there's a camera and her dad wanting to “play
another game” there telling her to be quiet 'cause they “don't
want her mother to hear” while they “make another movie; just
[her] and daddy”. That's when the doctor shows up and kills her.
No jokes this time 'cause... yeah.
Madison and Holt make it down to the basement where the vent young
Mackie crawled through to escape is. Remember, they had to run down
the stairs past whatever door was on the main floor to get to the
basement in order to search for this vent. Rather than a vent, they
first find the bodies of everyone the doc has killed in the course of
the movie. Including Ivy so that means the doctor is now free to
come after them since that's how evil spirits work. They do find the
vent and manage to pry the grill covering it open, but not before the
doctor shows up and Holt tries to fight him with a pipe that was just
lying around. As you might guess, this leads to Holt being thrown
back into the pool at his parent's place trying to save his brother.
The doctor shows up as the brother as Holt tries to give CPR, but is
stopped from killing him by Madison who, having come back from the
escape vent she was crawling into, hits the doctor with that useful
lead pipe causing him to stab himself through the arm with his own
lobotomy needle.
They both crawl through the pipe with the doctor removing the needle
and then ripping off his lab coat to reveal the gimp costume
underneath (to be fair, this is what he was in when he was strung up
on the wall and the patients killed him; it was one of the “therapy”
rooms in his hospital... I don't understand it either).
You would think that, since the doctor has been limited to the
asylum for 60 years, once they escaped through the vent it'd be fine.
Not so since, for no reason whatsoever, the doctor shows up out in
the open on the other side of the tunnel in a broken and abandoned
factory. In the middle of the day, mind you. I mean, it was pitch
black night a few minutes ago when they were running for their lives,
but now that they're going to be outside it's a clear day. And the
doctor is there. And there's a forest and no other buildings around
even though they were just on a university campus which was
(presumably) in the middle of a city. How long was that tunnel they
crawled through?
Trying to escape, Holt helps Madison by boosting her up onto a ledge
through a fence. And by that I mean he “shamelessly grabs her ass
as he boosts her up through a fence on a ledge that she probably
could have pulled herself up to just as easily”. They don't even
try to disguise it or anything. This is just the scene where
Scuzzy-Douche grabs the main character's ass. They run across some
train tracks with a train almost running them over since that'll stop
a ghost (hint: it doesn't), then run through the aforementioned
forest that showed up out of nowhere until Madison trips over the
largest most obvious branch in the woods and falls. As you might
assume, the doctor is there to great her when she looks up.
Some more running since the doctor didn't feel like doing anything
more than just standing there menacingly at the time, and this time
it's Holt that falls down a clearly seen hill in the middle of a
brightly lit forest for no reason. Trying to keep him from looking
foolish, Jill came tumbling after. Sorry, MADISON came tumbling
after. Anyway, Holt manages to defy all laws of logic, natural
selection, and spit in the face of humanity being the dominant
species of the planet by getting his leg trapped between two logs no
more than an inch and a half across and then not being able to get it
free or even reach his arms down to try and move one of the logs.
Seriously, he just lies there jerking his leg around like it's caught
in a bear trap or something. At least try to use your hands your
fucking idiot.
Anyway, the doctor shows up and, I shit you not, tries to sound like
Marlon Brando in The Godfather. His line, delivered in an actually
not too bad impersonation, is “There's no point in... running”,
Seriously, if Don Corleone was wearing a BDSM suit and holding
lobotomy knives over top of a trapped college kid and a terrified
other college kid, this would be what it was like. That thought
alone makes me laugh and really undercuts the tension they're trying
to build with this scene. In fact, I'm going to go back and watch it
again just to make sure that's what it sounds like. Yup, that and
the next line the doctor says are clear cut NAMBLA (National
Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alike) applications (South Park,
come on now, if they can joke about it so can I). Anyway, the doc
moves in for the kill on Holt again, but this time Madison cries out
for the good doctor to “help” her. The doc goes for it and,
despite Holt's protests, he goes over to dispense his murderous form
of tough love therapy on her.
Paused the movie and time for wild speculation. I'm betting I know
how they end this. Remember how so far whenever the doctor has
killed people he takes them back to their original trauma first? And
how he takes the form of the person that caused their trauma and goes
out of his way to re-enact it before ultimately killing them?
Remember what caused Madison's trauma in the first place? It was her
father killing himself in front of them all. The doctor wants to
re-enact her trauma? Let him go for it. Just as he gets to the
point where he flips in instead of her dad, Madison, in her gritty
heroine of a horror movie voice, delivers a one-liner about the
trauma being her dad died and the doc's brains end up blown out. Cut
to the doc's body dropping in the woods, Madison helping Holt out of
that inexplicably puzzling pile of firewood, and the two of them
walking off into the sunset or whatever. Good fucking ending
considering the movie it's attached to.
As you might guess, this is not what happens. She does call him
over and the doctor does fall for it with Holt yelling about it the
whole time, but then... yeah... all that happens is she takes one of
his lobotomy spikes and stabs him through the head with it. Also,
it's not even “she wrestles one away from him and hits him with his
own spike”, it's one that she had in her hand from... when she took
it from him in the basement? That's the only other time she might
have grabbed one, although fucked if it was ever in her hand between
then and now. She does get a pretty good one-liner in since the
doctor has always said “give me your suffering” before he “cures”
his other victims. He says that to her and she comes back with “give
me YOUR suffering, motherfucker!” Not exactly Die Hard level
one-liner, granted, but considering this movie doesn't even take the
best ending it wrote into it's own script and she's supposed to be 18
or so, I'm willing to bet that's as good a one-liner as anyone would
come up with on the spot.
Oh yeah, that's the end, by the way. She uses a lobotomy pick she
didn't have until right then to stab him through the head and we
watch all the spirits of the people he killed float away and his body
collapse into the stereotypical black dust of horror movies. Then
Holt and Madison wander through the forest to a road in the middle of
a field holding hands without even a thought to the fact that none of
the field, forest, or country road should be that close to their
university dorm. The same bad music from the start rolls over the
credits.
But seriously, how much better was my ending than the one in the
movie? The last scene is the doctor taking the place of her dad,
with the gun still to his head, and telling her to give him her
suffering, and she answers back with “you forgot one thing... if he
doesn't die, there is no suffering” and then the doctor/dad shoots
himself and the spirits are freed, etc, etc. Aside from that... good
on them for subverting the horror movie idea that the obviously
slutty blonde will be the one to get naked? I'm reaching for
anything good about this so there's that and the whole sociological
undertones that I totally made up for that one scene. Even if you
include that, though, the crappy music (and there actually was more
than one song despite it all sounding like the same generic crap)
ruins it. No stars unless you feel the need to see what a girl who
looks similar to the one on the show Fringe looks like naked
underwater. It might be worth seeing if that's your fetish,
otherwise not so much.
