By Ben Bussey
I thought I might be pleased to see Marcus Nispel take on an original horror movie. As much as I despised his rehashes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th for Platinum Dunes, there was still clearly some visual flair and affection for the genre on show there, mishandled as it was. I’m also happy to admit I enjoyed his Conan the Barbarian reboot a great deal more than some. All these films demonstrated an eagerness to go all out there with the sex and violence, which counts for something in a filmmaker working in the mainstream at a time when PG-13 dominates all. So, perhaps with a fresh, new property that was all his own, it didn’t seem outside the realms of possibility that Nispel could make a genuinely great horror movie, something which really stood apart from the pack.
I suppose it’s still possible Nispel really does have such a film in him, but whichever title you give it – The Asylum, Exeter or its original moniker Backmask – this sure as shit isn’t it. And while it may not be a direct remake of any one horror movie, it’s little more than a ragtag patchwork of a slew of instantly recognisable tropes lifted from other existing genre entries. Imagine Rob Zombie had been asked to remake The Exorcist rather than Halloween, remove all shots of his wife’s arse, then mix it up with Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead, and this is pretty much what would come slopping out at the end of it all: something that looks like it should contain all the value and goodness of the best teen-centred, gore-soaked horror movie, and might even go some way to satiating the bloodlust of less picky viewers, but is ultimately bland, obvious and lacking any personality of its own.
Indeed, the fact that it was ever called Backmask at all stands testament to how little sense of its own identity this film has, for the practice of backmasking – that old Satanic panic trick of hiding backwards messages in rock music – is referred to only briefly, more or less in passing, and doesn’t have a great deal of bearing on what transpires. Instead, Nispel (who, as well as directing, also came up with the ‘original’ story, fleshed out into a screenplay by – oh goodie – Texas Chainsaw 3D scribe Kirsten Elms) has seemingly gone out of his way to cover all the bases for our adolescent protagonists to provoke unholy wrath. First off, the young rapscallions abuse the trust of the church by throwing a massive booze and drugs-fueled party in Exeter Asylum, a burned-out abandoned mental institute owned by the local clergy, whilst the priest in charge (Stephen Lang) is off premises for the weekend. However, not content with all the underage drinking and indulgence in illegal narcotics (although sex seems to be left out of the equation, strangely), the few hardcore party people left over once the sun comes up decide to start messing around with – ominous thunder and lightning – the occult. Or, at least, they play light as a feather stiff as board on a kid brother who looks uncannily like a miniature Jason Mewes. And this, it seems, is enough for the kid to get demonically possessed. Or, at least, just about all of them immediately assume the kid is possessed, needing very little persuasion on the matter, as opposed to just assuming he’s wigging out from all the booze and drugs in his barely pubescent body. Anyway, you know the drill: before long all of them will either die horribly, become a puppet of Satan, or some combination thereof.
What else is there to say? The teens, all of whom are constantly glistening in a dirty-yet-clean way which only seems possible in a Marcus Nispel movie, are all utterly contemptible, constantly spewing half-witted trash talk with the overconfidence of a 10-year old alpha male who’s just discovered all the rudest swear words. Not one of them is worth giving a damn about, and so when the deaths come and various twists and turns occur they really don’t hit home at all. Yes, there are a few agreeably OTT deaths come the final act, but none of it is enough to slap you out of the stupor of having sat through something so generic and tedious. Likewise the feeble attempts at humour; there is a perhaps surprising emphasis on sub-Kevin Smith stoner comedy dialogue, and who knows, perhaps it might have worked had they just gone all-out and made it a bona fide horror comedy. As it is, The Asylum/Exeter/Backmask/whatever just isn’t funny, isn’t scary, isn’t interesting, and ultimately just isn’t worth bothering with.
The Asylum hits UK DVD and Blu-ray on 4th May, from Studiocanal.