Stonehearst Asylum

A spirited gothic tale, played with welcome black humour.

With Stonehearst Asylum, director Brad Anderson doles out a vintage Halloween treat — a straightforward Poe adaptation of the sort that Vincent Price used to star in — and gives it a freshness and complexity that make it a delight.

Based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe, directed with style and imagination by Brad Anderson (The Machinist), filmed in the creepy darkness of Bulgaria (you hardly get this kind of movie anymore), and starring an illustrious cast solid and dedicated enough to craft to make you believe they’re in a depraved version of Hamlet staged in Elsinore Castle, this is a movie that is several cuts above your usual straitjacket thriller. Enter at your own risk.

It may not be his worst film overall, but Stonehearst is Anderson’s flattest film, a disappointingly shallow affair that wastes an opportunity to breathe life into a timeless Edgar Allen Poe short story.

On the surface, Anderson seems to have all the necessary pieces for a surreal psycho pop. But the fear factor eludes him, leaving Stonehearst Asylum more insipid than insane.

In the wake of the ostentatious atmospherics summoned by the likes of Shutter Island and American Horror Story: Asylum, the film feels unnecessarily restrained.

Brad Anderson has basically thrown everything into the film's furnace so as to keep its wobbly narrative running — to no avail, sadly: as the leaps between genre tropes and divergent threads exposes ever wider plot holes, this incoherent adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe attempts endless twists and turns culminating in a supposedly cathartic denouement drenched in sap.

A new doctor arrives at an insane asylum and the methods used by the doctor and staff are totally out of line for the times. Of course, this is a 100 years ago so the acceptable methods are barbaric. This doctor seems to be getting results with these new methods but something is a little off. There are more twists to this story, some anticipated, some not. For me, there's something creepy about being in locked in with crazy people, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest anyone?

Una pelicula que desde el principio es entretenida , buenas actuaciones y muy buenos escenarios y con un final muy agradable, definitivo es muy palomera.

Good performances and enough twists to keep any viewer hooked. Nevertheless, the film is no remarkable achievement, with a very unsettled tone that keeps its PG-13 rating never nearly on edge of anything else, which is this film's main sin; it is simply not as dark as it should be.

Not a bad movie, but not even close to Shutter Island. Lets compare - both movies share quite similar idea - asylum, things are not as it seems, mystery, surprise ending. Both movies begin promicing - there is some deep mystery main hero tried to decipher through the lenght of a story, but then things become much different. Seriously, why this love story is here? Really out of place. If the author wants to see the real mystery of love he should see Illusionist movie. Here it looks weak and dull. The ending, unfortunately, is quite weak aswell. He is a patient, but not a doctor, he faked them all, what a surprise. And then he became a director of an asylum, lol. 610 and mostly for Kingsley masterplay.

Good performances/actors and sets but very predicable. This film is so predictable that you get the feeling "its one of those movies" very early on...