Paranormal Asylum [DVD]

More funny than scary, this thriller tells the story of two documentary filmmakers, making a movie about Typhoid Mary in an abandoned (or is it?) hospital.There are a couple of decent scares but some of the acting is hit and miss; one of the male leads looks as if he's trying to solve a complicated maths problem much of the time. Special applause must go out to Laura Gilreath (Michelle), who basically carries the whole film.It’s low budget but worth a watch.

Two best friends from university days reunite to realise one's dream to explore the legend of Mary Malone (Typhoid Mary) who he believes died alone in an asylum. He has illegally set up a series of cameras in the supposed asylum where Mary died. They then proceed to film the events but unwittingly get involved in Mary's plan for more and more killing.There's no secret that this film is going to use handheld cameras as it says they are 'aspiring filmmakers' on the box art, so going in it's obvious that this is going to be another budget film with questionable production values and everything else that goes along with a low budget. And while it's possible to make great films with little money, this one isn't one of those. While the filmmakers can string a film together, it's only just held together and the whole thing screams 'amateur'. There is one style of filming (lots of short scenes and quick cutting from scene to scene) which I guess is supposed to help keep the pacing up but I felt it made the film tiring to watch and the jumpiness made it difficult to keep up with what was going on. It didn't help that the acting is just bad (I'm being polite) and the script is padded out with a lot of unnecessary talking and really, nothing much happens most of the time. Ideas are not developed and some main plot drivers (eg. catching footage of ghosts on film) are there but never used. I found it really annoying that they seemed to be catching great images but they never looked at what they had (???!!!). None of the characters are likeable and I didn't really care what happened to them one way or another. The ending was supposed to be revealing but it fell flat and I was glad the whole thing was over.Something else that sabotaged the production was the extraordinarily bad sound design - you can see the final sound was added after filming (which is normal) but it wasn't done well resulting in lots of lip synching issues. And often the voices and sound effects were far too loud making it sound unnatural.This is a rather bad film which is unlikely to impress.

As described

I like spooky asylums, books, films, etc so this film ticked the right boxes from the start. However, Im not sure I was missing something here but the exterior shots of this supposed abandoned building (complete with obligatory Danger keep Out signs) did not reflect the interior, which looked as abandoned as the hospital I work in. The ending was a bit abrupt as well.

Not bad but like like alot of horror films no major scares a little twist at the end alright to buy for your collection

I thought this film was ok

average

its not too bad seen better