Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary (2013)

What a mess.This film is a good example of the axiom, 'The Story Is King'. The story is indeed of paramount importance, so you'd better include one. These guys forgot to.I've seen some very good low-budget non-mainstream horrors recently, such as 'Absentia' and 'Afflicted'. This isn't one of them.Annoyingly, this film starts out with great promise. Whoever was fiddling with the video-toolbox managed to get some great effects out of it, and even the occasional momentary scare.But then the complete lack of a plot destroys the whole thing, and you end up watching it to the end - I'm assuming the reader got that far - purely on a train-wreck-fascination basis. The story makes no sense at all.And what's with all the historical inaccuracies? Surely a good ghost plot could have been cooked up around the strange tale of the real Mary - the truth was bizarre enough by itself. This fiction was just silly. The bits with the girlfriend, the kitchen, the modified voice, the basement and - particularly - the recipe, were just sooooooo irritating.Well guys, I hope it didn't leave you completely broke. Analyse your mistakes, and write a story before you attempt your next effort.- -- ---

I was afraid to start watching it and not for the scary parts if they were involved but for the title. It contains the word Paranormal and of course you are immediately linked to the Paranormal Activity franchise. And when it is written on the sleeve Inspired By True Events then you know you have to be carefully. The first 15 minutes you start to know the main leads and it works but of course the activity is already there and it didn't look convincing. It is even done like the original franchise with Day 1 and Day 2 so you also know that it is going to be a slow movie. In the beginning the activity is done by sound. Later on the activity becomes more active in lights going on and off, windy area's, shaky cam shots. You have seen it all before but I kept watching to see more. Then the activity takes place in the camera itself and slowly it did lose my attention. The ghost on the rail track was a bit ridiculous. And from there on it's clear that it was a low budget flick, where were the effects? The acting should show the possession but that just doesn't work that way. Here and there we had the fast movement of the possessed girl but after a while the movie fast forwarded too, I pressed the button on the remote. To be honest, the best part was after 65 minutes when Michelle (Laura Gilreath) was walking around in her underwear...and her face changing into a fake Goth, well it wasn't intended to be funny but it was. Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1,5/5 Comedy 0/5

I was warned - but I still watched it.Plot ruined by terrible acting, terrible effects, terrible dialogue and character interactions. They could have foregone the badly animated effects, particularly the ghost on the train track which looked like the Pilsbury Dough Man without a head, and spent it on better actors. Having a ghost at every turn could be replaced perhaps with long pauses where the viewer's imagination creates a sense of something. The two main characters, film-makers, had no discernible relationship as friends, the one with darker hair was just angry all the time and completely ignoring the fact that his friend had seen ghosts even though he was setting up cameras to find ghosts. There are other emotions in life. Perhaps they should have been two less emotional college friends studying film. The taller one was also not a very good film-maker anyway as he didn't seem to film anything.The camera filter was also odd, sort of dark-edged, not either good quality and saturated or just hand-held home camera. The sound was also strange as if it had been dubbed, the position of the source didn't seem to match where people were standing sometimes.I also think that the makeup artist hired to turn the main female character into an angry spirit thought that she was preparing Marilyn Manson for a gig.

This movie suffers from many problems:1) Plot holes large enough to drive a truck through. 2) Horrible acting. 3) Bad cinematography. 4) Lame script writing. 5) Confusing, convoluted plot line. 6) Flat, moronic characters that we never get emotionally invested in, because we are never given a reason to care about them. 7) Continuity problems. 8) Bad, boring soundtrack. 9) Boring story that is never fully explained.There is more I would complain about, but I don't want to waste any more time on this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad direct-to-Netflix release.