Call me easy, but I like director David R. Ellis’ movies. Yes, even Snakes on a Plane, and especially Final Destination 2. Sophisticated cineastes-about-town like me can’t live by Eric Rohmer alone, you know. We need a little Sarah Roemer to liven things up.
And with that back-scratching out of the way, I can say that the Ellis/Roemer collaboration Asylum is awful — dreck so powerful, it would take a barrel of soft soap to wash it away. Roemer plays a college freshman assigned to a new dorm. Well, not so much new as the renovated wing of an asylum for troubled teens that hasn’t been used since the youth revolted in the mid 1930s and killed the doctor who had been torturing them by shoving lobotomy needles into his eyes.
Now, the doctor’s ghost is roaming the halls and continuing to prey on young people with troubled pasts. The un-renovated wing in ruins — which, after 75 years, still has file cabinets containing patients’ histories — is attached to the dorm, so all it takes is about two minutes worth of computer hacking for the six kids who seem to be the dorm’s only inhabitants to gain access to the old section of the building.
Ellis is known for his wicked sense of humor, but it is entirely lacking in this hodgepodge of supernatural slasher clichés and clueless jump moments. You won’t believe a word of it, although “The” and “End” will be mighty welcome. —Doug Bentin
Even the most die-hard of armchair sleuths would be intimidated by a 300-minute mystery. While your schedule and your ass may be unable to take 
Hot-tempered husband/father Matt (David Oyelowo) is torn up at the prospect of losing his entire immediate family, while also considered a possible suspect by the authorities leading the investigation (Hugh Bonneville and Janet McTeer). Their widening net weaves in encounters with journalists, a potential pedophile, a nursing home resident (Edward Woodward) and one horny young woman (Sarah Smart) with a secret.
Otherwise, the first two-thirds stick pretty close to the book, even lifting entire scenes of dialogue. Unfortunately, what was punchy on the page drags in the hands of director Mikael Håfström, which does the abrupt, condensed ending no favors. In Siegel’s book, there were several endings, but each with a purpose, adding layer upon layer to an already suspenseful story. Here, it’s your standard revenge climax, and by cutting so much out of it, it’s bereft of the logic the author brought to it.
Written and directed by Howard R. Cohen, the auteur also responsible for the original 
When he informs the others of his newfound power, one girl says, “Oh, wow! What are we waiting for?” and drives herself straight into a moving van. When she, too, resurrects not long after her funeral, the other members off themselves as well — in an absurdly comic sequence — by jumping off buildings and chaining bricks to their bodies as they swim. Meanwhile, the police are pissed because the now-true-to-their-name Living Dead delight in murdering innocents and destroying grocery stores.