#HoldYourBreath (2012)

Directed by: Jared Cohn

Writers: Kenny Zinn (story), Geoff Meed

Somehow it happened that I watched another dreadful Asylum movie, I have absolutely no idea why. Perhaps I liked the poster, but I should have listened to the golden rule I'd already mentioned: DON'T watch The Asylum movies! Well, I asked for it...

 

Though I only planned to review two other Asylum movies, as I said in the review of Barely Legal, this one at least happens to be a landmark of some kind - it's apparently the first theatrical release by The Asylum!

 

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference - this movie does look slightly better than the others, but it's so aggressively stupid that it's just impossible to overlook. The story follows a standard group of young guys and girls looking for sex and finding death instead. This time, their doom comes in the form of a particularly nasty ghost of some murderer. There's this stupid urban legend that says you have to hold your breath when you're passing by a cemetery, otherwise you risk being possessed by all kinds of spirits. But - it only applies if you're in a car (!). If on foot, you're safe.

 

Of course, in every single movie of this type there's a stoner guy, and it's him who doesn't follow the rule (he's too busy inhaling) so he's the first one to get possessed. He manages to off a cop before the spirit passes on to another member of the group, the one that looks like a hybrid between Rafael Nadal and Christopher Reeve.

 

The only difference that this body switching creates is that most of the group members get a chance to kill someone. Otherwise, unless we count occasional red eyes (oooh, scary!), there are no body deformations of any kind.

 

Of course, The Asylum wouldn't live to their reputation if they weren't unable to completely mess up even the simplest slasher formula. Throughout its length, the movie fires a cannonade of stupidity at the viewer. First, there's the infamous "give me your cell phones and I will hide them in this glove compartment, that's about to become unreachable when we most need it" plot device. Then, there's a couple that goes to an abandoned insane asylum to have a "quick" hump, while the others immediately decide to follow them for some reason (not of a voyeuristic nature, unfortunately). So they are trying to find them and they're wandering through this huge abandoned building, and yet they never try calling them. Then, that Christopher Reeve - Rafael Nadal character, who happens to be the most irritating of the bunch, gets dared by some bimbo to sit in an old electric chair, which for some reason frightens him so much that he demands a blowjob in return. Dangerous Liaisons, eat your heart out! And to top it off, the movie ends with a ghost fight so ridiculous that you have to see it to believe (but please don't).

 

If there's anything redeeming here, it's a completely gratuitous sex scene and an unusual amount of eye violence - many murders for some reason include gouging out of an eye. However, the usual total lack of competence on the part of The Asylum directors and writers makes for a painful experience of a completely different kind than (but similar in intensity to) eye gouging out.

Barely Legal (2011)

Directed by: Jose Montesinos

Writer: Naomi Selfman

 

 

As we all know, the quality of The Asylum “films” (if you can call them that) generally ranges from simply unwatchable to “I want to rip out my eyes and pierce my ears and jump into a pool full of piranhas” kind of unwatchable. If you’ve seen one, you know the amount of pain it brings. However, there are a few titles (I’ve counted three so far) that by sheer fluke aren’t that devastating for your mental health. Mind you, certainly not because they are less stupid than the others, hell no! The fact is that they have certain other… “qualities” (hehe) worth mentioning. So, to repeat, if you see that a movie is from The Asylum kitchen, you are to avoid at all costs, unless it’s one of those (so far) three we’re going to review here. Now we’ll cover Barely Legal, and the other two are Snakes on a Train and Invasion of the Pod People.

Barely Legal is a “comedy” that’s by no means less idiotic than other films by this company. It’s kind of an inverted American Pie story – we have three smoking hot girls, all turning 18 on the same day, on the mission of losing virginity during their birthday party. It turns out that’s not as easy as it sounds (!)

Our three heroines correspond to stereotypes established long ago – one is smart (or, rather, less stupid than the other two), the other is a slut (yep, I guess this is the first time that we have a movie with a virgin slut) and the third is kind of a religious freak. The only inversion is that the “smart” one is actually a blonde. It takes really high disbelief suspension powers to swallow the story of three best friends sharing birthday and living together in a huge mansion with a swimming pool and everything. No parents are mentioned here, so it’s unclear who pays for all that.

Much more disappointing is the fact that this movie never manages to reach the atmosphere of those party movies it tries to copy. From the beginning, we are being promised that the 18^th birthday party will be something spectacular, never seen before, blah blah blah, however, when it actually starts, we never have that impression. Occasionally we meet some characters wandering around, sometimes something happens, but at all times it’s painfully obvious that there wasn’t enough money to hire the required number of actors for this kind of thing.

As far as comedy goes, it’s completely unfunny from the first to the last second, but thankfully it also manages not to be terribly disgusting. One notable exception is a scene of oral sex with a dog. I could really live without that one.

It’s obvious that it’s a horrible movie that fails both as a comedy and… well, as a film, so question is – why would anyone watch this? The answer is simple – this movie contains a ridiculous amount of nudity, far, far beyond what its more famous competitors like American Pie are willing to show. Once the party starts, it’s not easy to find a scene where no one is naked. All three lead actresses repeatedly take their clothes off and a huge, huuuuuuge plus is that all three of them are natural from head to toe. So, I would certainly recommend you to watch this one and feast your eyes. To reduce the amount of stupidity to which you’re going to be subjected, you can mute the movie and play some music of your own preference. Double win!