Asylum

A rather basic and fairly under-cooked horror anthology movie, albeit with an interesting framing story. You'd think that being written by Robert Bloch, the guy who wrote Psycho, would give this some pedigree, but all the stories feel like cliff-notes versions of larger stories. A man murders his wife and chops her up, and the body parts get revenge on him and his mistress. A tailor makes a suit for a weird customer that turns out to be necromantic. A woman comes home from a mental hospital, and has a murderous second personality. A guy makes puppets and believes he can inject them with living personalities by sheer force of will. All the stories feel both like well-traveled tropes, and yet only the thinnest versions of them. And the wraparound story -- a doctor being interviewed for a job at the head of an asylum has to interview four patients to see which one is the former head of staff, who has had a violent breakdown -- is a clever vehicle to facilitate the short stories, but it falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. The acting is fine in spots -- Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ecklund are great in the third story, and Peter Cushing is fun in the second story, even if there isn't enough of him -- but none of the stories feel like full enough ideas, leaving the whole movie feeling slight and unfulfilling. This time was full of horror anthology movies, especially coming out of the UK. Asylum is certainly one of them.