Asylum

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.