It's a lost cause.
Comment
09/03/05
Asylum (2005)
36
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:85
Fresh:31
Rotten:54
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: This catastrophic adaptation of Patrick McGrath's novel gets sillier and more implausible as it goes along.
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Genre: Thriller
Synopsis: Set in 1950s England, ASYLUM, a tale of erotic obsession, tells the story of Stella Raphael (Natasha Richardson), a restless, beautiful woman who desperately desires to find in romantic love the... [More]
Starring: Natasha Richardson, Ian McKellen, Marton Csokas, Hugh Bonneville
Director: David Mackenzie
Reviews for Asylum
The film manages to turn potentially interesting characters into caricatures and potentially heady material into soap-opera melodrama.
09/02/05
A sort of perverse update of an overwrought Barbara Stanwyck-Bette Davis melodrama...
09/02/05
The film, with its uniformly terrific cast, stern Gothic overtones and steady but measured pacing, is a crisp, old-fashioned delight, eschewing cheap tricks for repeated tiny pricks of unease that work up to a continuous gnawing dread.
09/02/05
The film's great strength is a cast of supporting players who steal scene after scene from their leading lady.
09/02/05
... one of those terribly restrained psychological dramas that simply drips with prestige -- but too often trips over its own pretensions.
09/02/05
Richardson's no-holds-barred performance captures Stella's rekindled passion and despair when things go to hell. Alas, the story goes to hell with her.
09/02/05
'Asylum' is a film that enthralls and entertains while at the same time raising the hairs on the back of your neck.
09/02/05
The film is basically a string of repetitive ruts.
09/01/05
Asylum is all very formal, detached, and, regrettably, sane.
08/29/05
populated by manipulative and unrelatable crazy characters that plod through improbable scenarios to an inevitable nihilistic denouement
08/26/05
A gothic fairytale.
08/24/05
Click to read the article
08/20/05
Top CriticA paint-by-numbers melodrama that may have been written in someone's sleep….*yawn!*
08/20/05
In the end, Asylum, like its wretched lovers, suffers from its unrelieving passion.
08/20/05
A completely unbelievable melodrama and bodice ripper ... its fine cast just barely prevents it from being laughably ridiculous and completely unwatchable.
08/19/05
As Stella recedes before this deluge of objectification, Richardson digs into Stella's many moods and miscues with something like relish.
08/19/05
There's nothing remotely seething -- or sympathetic or provocative -- about this overstuffed movie, which bears the unmistakable signs of a film too in love with its own fetishistic production values.
08/19/05
A competent exercise in atmospheric bosom-heaving, if not plausible storytelling.
08/19/05
Richardson commands every scene she's in.
08/19/05
Latest News for Asylum
August 27, 2007:
RT talks to Hallam Foe helmer David Mackenzie
The Brit director introduces us to his "teen gothic fairytale." More...
August 26, 2007:
RT-UK's What to Watch at the Edinburgh Film Festival
Rotten Tomatoes UK heads up north to take in the sights and sounds of the Edinburgh Film Festival. And as the celebration of cinema draws to a close we present what's hot and... More...
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