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www.filmcritic.com - : As cool and chiseled as star Natasha Richardson’s face, Asylum (based on a novel by Patrick McGrath) is set for the most part at a high-security insane asylum in northern England in 1959. Richardson plays Stella Raphael, whose husband Max (Hugh Bonneville) has been made deputy superintendent at the hospital, meaning a long spell among the mad and their repressed warders for Stella and their son Charlie (Gus Lewis). At the best of times, Stella seems like she’d have difficulty fitting in, but with her aloof and depressed air, cigarette held high in one hand, martini in the other, she seems downright ogre-ish to the provincial locals. Stella smokes at her kitchen table, asking the maid, “How did my predecessor fill her time?” Consumed with work, Max is hardly any help, and even Charlie doesn’t seem able to keep Stella’s attention. more...
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www.eonline.com - : If you dig legitimately creepy thrillers, you'd be crazy to miss Asylum. Ian McKellen checks in as a sinister psychiatrist working in a 1959 nuthouse. Strange things are afoot when Natasha Richardson, the repressed wife of new superintendent Hugh Bonneville, just happens to fall for the seemingly unjustly incarcerated patient (Marton Csokas). Guess she's not so concerned that he's in there for brutally murdering his wife in a jealous rage. And what's up with McKellen's unsavory attraction to Csokas? Thanks to a taut script and director David Mackenzie's uncanny ability to conjure atmosphere, the flick deftly unravels all of the mysteries. And it keeps you on the line all the way through. In short, it's just what the doctor ordered. more...
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Critic Reviews
