what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

There are many inconsistencies in this film. For example, Dr. Burke chases Madison and Holt from the asylum during the night to an old factory where is day! They say that Dr. Burke was killed in 1939 when Mackey was 11... As the story comes in 2007, Mackey should be 79! In the movie looks like 50! There is not a real connection between the drama of Madison and her family with a madness syndrome and two suicides with the drama of Dr. Burke. You imagine that the suicide of Madison's brother in the same asylum would have any connection with Dr. Burke, but no... This drama is never resolved. The college ambassador is a very disturbing character and he never faces Dr. Burke, as well as the police, as well as the many other resident students at the place that disappear completely from the last scenes as the main characters were alone in the place... Very poor film.

A bunch of college freshmen are housed in a dorm that was originally an insane asylum, where the doctor in charge perpetrated horrendous experiments on young patients. Soon enough, he's back from the dead, knocking off the college kids one by one. What starts out as a ghost story devolves into a standard slasher flick, reminiscent of many other such flicks. I wish it had stayed a ghost story, but it is evident that the filmmakers lacked the budget to go that route, as there are virtually no special effects. The first 20 minutes provide a good buildup to what then becomes a disappointing knockoff of the remake of THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, minus any viable spooky effects. The mad doctor simply shows up and kills, and then repeats the process. The college kids are all stock characters. although it's interesting to note two of the female leads are dead ringers for Claire Danes and Angelina Jolie. Couldn't hurt.

Terrifying from the opening scene, Asylum grabs you and locks you into a roller coaster of bone-chilling thrills. The story follows young Madison (Sarah Roemer) and 5 new friends (and one not-so-friendly Resident Assistant) as they arrive at Richard Miller College for Freshmen Orientation. Plenty of college hijinks provide a fun back drop for the soon-to-follow horrors. The new students quickly learn that their brand-new dormitory was once a mental asylum where teenage patients were tortured beyond belief by a brilliant, but sadistic psychiatrist, Magnus Burke. He's back, and bringing his new prescription… death.If you love jolting surprises and gruesome violence, then you will love Asylum. There are several scenes guaranteed to make you cringe, and plenty of "out-of-the-blue" frights. The acting is good enough, and the direction is pretty good for the genre. The dialogue is a little off, but the comedic one-liners make-up for it. Overall, this is a solid horror flick.

What to think of this movie. It's Mark Rolston who makes the movie, appeared before in Corman's Humanoids from the deep and Saw V he gives a perfect performance, made me even think a bit of pinhead from hellraiser. He's got the face to play a killer. But the hardest part is the storyline. Too poor. They could have made an excellent flick but there isn't enough "suffering" in it, not that much gore or blood. The youth that is going to be killed are the typical kind of kids appearing in a horror movie. The oversexed mr macho guy, the sexy girl, the nerd, the thinking girl, the bastard boss,...They all play very well but again, their own storyline isn't worked out enough. Even the usual nudity doens't give it a surplus value. It's a shame because in a time of torture porn they could have made a classic one. They should have known when you use a sentence like "give me your suffering" that you should give people real suffering. Watch it for Rolston's performance, no more no less.