PARANORMAL ASYLUM (2013)

Studio:       Naedomi
Director:    Nimrod Zalmanowitz
Writer:       Fred Edison
Producer:  Nimrod Zalmanowitz, Joey Azoulai
Stars:     Aaron Mathias, Nathan Spiteri, Laura Gilreath, Grace Evans, Jenny Lee Mitchell, T. Boomer Tibbs, Tym Moss

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Two aspiring documentarians uncover the legend of Typhoid Mary when they investigate a reportedly haunted mental hospital. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Day 1 – Mark Goodwin returns to New York after five years as a failed screenwriter in Los Angeles. While waiting for his friend Andy to pick him up, Mark encounters a girl who disappears suddenly after he turns his back on her. Mark and Andy prepare to make a film in an abandoned hospital reportedly haunted by Typhoid Mary. According to their story, Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant taken in by a pedophile with typhoid after she was orphaned. She started work as a cook, but became a sex slave until people around her started dying. Mark sees an old woman through his camera lens. Andy takes Mark to meet his fiancée Michelle. Michelle is initially upset, but ultimately becomes supportive, when she discovers how much money Andy has spent on the project. She insists on joining the duo.

Day 2 – Andy tells Mark that Typhoid Mary was secretly transported to the hospital that they are investigating after she suffered a stroke. The trio sets up surveillance cameras throughout the building. Michelle is frightened by paranormal activity when she is trapped in one of the rooms.

Day 3 – Since her mother was psychic, Michelle produces a box of séance tools that she wants to use inside the asylum. Andy assigns Mark to interview George Sheffield in New Jersey. George tells Mark that his father was the first person to find Mary. She was hired by a family that suspected she had typhoid as they wanted her to infect their child. Mary tried to kill George’s father before being quarantined. George claims that Mary’s ghost is taking revenge on the descendants of those who treated her poorly. George attacks Mark when Andy asks about Mary’s transfer to the Hudson River Hospital. Mark next interviews Evelyn, a descendant of the Windsor family. Her great uncle owned the building. Mark steals a file of hospital records from Evelyn’s basement. A ghost later chases Mark alongside a railroad track. Mark reviews the files with Andy and Michelle. They discover that Typhoid Mary was used for experiments. The trio returns to the hospital when their surveillance video feed goes down. Strangely, Mark and Michelle are unable to reach each other over their phones when Andy and Mark fix the feed onsite. While Andy sleeps, Michelle performs a séance alone. A spirit overtakes her body and Michelle then drives away. When Andy discovers Michelle is missing, he and Mark track her to the hospital. They find Michelle wandering the halls, but an unseen force drags her away before the men can retrieve her and take her home.

Day 4 – Andy trades his friend Dan a bag of weed for use of Dan’s boat. Looking for a well marked on a map found in Evelyn’s files, Mark and Andy find several medical vials on a small island. Mark sees the apparition of Typhoid Mary. Andy takes the vials for lab tests. Mark tells Andy that he is seeing ghosts. Typhoid Mary’s shadow appears behind Michelle on a surveillance camera during the night. Mark wakes from a dream of Typhoid Mary kissing him through Michelle.

Day 5 – Andy’s friend Norm reveals that the vials contain thoradine, the first psychotropic drug which was also once used for treating mental health. Mark meets Evelyn in a cemetery. She shows him Mary’s gravestone, but reveals that Mary is not actually buried there. Evelyn tells Mark that she sees Mary in her dreams. Michelle dyes her hair black. She begins cooking and eating meat. Andy learns that George Sheffield’s father was the product manager for thoradine. Mark revisits George and witnesses him jumping from his balcony. Andy asks Mark to visit exorcist Dr. Brooks. Dr. Brooks warns Mark that he and the others are in danger before Dr. Brooks is suddenly shot through the window. Tensions rise between Mark, Andy, and Michelle. Michelle begins to seduce Mark, but he goes unconscious after seeing her become Typhoid Mary. Angry over Michelle, Andy attacks Mark when Mark comes to, but they quickly reconcile. The two men find Mary in a trance at a ruined building on the island where they found the vials. Andy and Mark subdue her with rope. Proclaiming that he is done with the project, Andy demands that Mark leave him alone with Michelle. Mark sees the ghost of a doctor on the hospital surveillance feed. He tells Andy that they are coming for Mary. While Andy argues with Mark about leaving, Michelle becomes possessed by Mary and then stabs her fiancé. Michelle chases Mark to the basement until the ghosts of the doctors come and take her away. Mark follows them to the hospital. Evelyn arrives and tells Mark that Mary was her half-sister. Their father sent Mary to the hospital so that he could have his way with her. Evelyn feeds off the essence of the victims that Mary possesses in return for helping Mary’s spirit attract them. Mark is taken captive and locked in the morgue while the doctors begin to experiment on Michelle.

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Review:

How many haunted asylums are still left in America that have not already been investigated by the various teams of cable television’s umpteen ghost hunting reality shows?  Aspiring documentarians Andy and Mark manage to find one more in New York’s Hudson Valley when they begin an investigation into the legend of Typhoid Mary in “Paranormal Asylum.”  After Andy’s fiancée Michelle becomes involved in the project, tensions rise, a ghostly possession takes place, an exorcist is called, and supernatural activity of course ensues.

Horror filmdom needs another “found footage” movie about investigating a haunted mental hospital as much as the 405 freeway needs another car during rush hour.  Maybe that is why “Paranormal Asylum” decided to be only partially “found footage” and why very little of it actually takes place inside its abandoned asylum, despite the film’s title.

Mary Mallon, a.k.a. Typhoid Mary, was a real person who lived in New York at the turn of the 20th century and who was infamously credited with the illnesses and deaths of the numerous people that she infected.  The “true events” that “Paranormal Asylum” was reportedly “inspired by” end with that fact.  From there, the screenplay takes several wild creative liberties with Mary’s biography.  The extent of Typhoid Mary’s complicity in the actual deaths attributed to her can be debated by historians.  But whether she is remembered as villain or victim, making a tragic character even more so with a fictional backstory involving a career as a sex slave and being raised by a pedophile is distasteful regardless.

The production does its best to approach a typical story in an atypical way, but its best is not good enough.  Taking a major chunk of the narrative out of the haunted asylum and replacing it with talking heads spouting exposition only affords the cast an opportunity to take rough performances off the rails.  An elderly man with a shady connection to the hospital delivers cryptic dialogue in a stilted manner similar to what William Shatner might sound like if he suffered a stroke.  Another character is so buffoonish with his misplaced enthusiasm that he comes off as a clown.  And the leads turn in work that is not much better with awkwardly feigned laughter and totally flat chemistry.

Random placement of first-person shots feel contrived and unnecessary, although the story has such little substance that neither “found footage” nor traditional formats offer any real advantage.  The visuals are washed in a strange patina where the edges of the frame are often obscured by black fog.  It is as though viewing through eyes suffering from macular degeneration.  The dark scenes are not using shadows for mood, but are swallowing the images whole in black tar.

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Yeah, don't scratch the "boat."

“Paranormal Asylum” is also infected by careless continuity gaffes and miscellaneous shortcomings.  Mistimed editing ranges from character posture changing between shots to an entire sequence clearly staged at dusk followed sequentially by a scene in the sunny afternoon.  After escorting a guest into her basement to research some old files, a character excuses herself by saying, “I’ll just be downstairs I guess.”  Is there somewhere even further down than the basement?  Just as goofy is the proud watercraft owner who warns his friend not to scratch his boat, when said boat is nothing but a metal rectangle with three $9.99 plastic patio chairs tied together by Christmas gift ribbon.

On the fright front, having the ghost of Typhoid Mary recite her recipe for Shepherd’s Pie in detail while stalking a victim is the movie’s idea of scary.  Sprinkle in a few nondescript ghosts achieved with basic dissolve effects and the underwhelming thrills are complete.  With little onscreen to capture the imagination, the viewer is left to ponder, what is the worse fate for Mary Mallon?  To have her name be forever synonymous with a fatal disease, or to be linked with a movie “inspired by true events,” but uninspired in everything else?

Review Score:  30

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