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Released by: Breaking Glass Pictures
Released on: August 30, 2007.
Director: Rania Ajami
Cast: Pepper Binkley, Bill Dawes, Judith Hawking
Year: 2009
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The Movie:
Rania Ajami's 2009 feature film debut is a weird movie. A very weird movie. Not a bad movie, mind you, in fact it's a pretty good movie, but weird is definitely the first word that comes to mind after watching it and trying to put some thoughts down as to how it shapes up. Let's start with a plot synopsis of sorts, shall we? It's probably for the best that we do.
When the movie begins, Dr. Raby (Daniel Irizarry) gives the obligatory blessing over the dinner about to be eaten only to be taken off to an insane asylum almost immediately afterwards. It seems Raby suffers from nymphomania, but is apparently a virgin? At any rate, he arrives in the nut house the same time a few other new recruits make their entrance. Here we meet a sexy exhibitionist named Miranda (Camille O'Sullivan), a gender confused guy named Alan (Bill Dawes), and a strange woman named Alice (Stella Maeve) who almost seems more robot than human. They are put under the charge of one Dr. Beard, though we never see this doctor, we only hear him address the patients through the hospital's intercom system. We do see Nurse Milly (Judith Hawking), however, as well as her two bizarre assistants - Mickey (Joseph McKenna) and Minnie (Ken Jennings). As there's only a single bed left in the entire facility ,the patients soon find themselves competing for the spot - but this will be more than a race or a test of skill, as once the competition is underway, true feeling come to the surface and… then they all wake up in the woods wearing animal heads as masks?
Shot in such a way as to keep you guessing and smart enough to know that character development is key in a movie like this, Asylum Seekers has no qualms whatsoever about pushing the audience face first into its surrealist territory and, once it gets us there, tying us down and making us stay a while. This is the type of movie where once the shift occurs, and it hits you upside the head when it does, it doesn't so much ask you to stick around and feel it out as it does smack you on the foot with a hammer so you kind of have to stay. It's all for the best, as it's the last half hour of the film, where things get exceptionally bizarre, where things get the most interesting. Stick with it, as the movie makes it very clear not only who wins that last spot in the asylum but also why and how they win it.
If the bizarre storytelling tactics don't hold you, the interesting location footage will as will the performances. No one here is taking home an Academy Award but all involved do a fine job nonetheless and Ajami's decision to shoot the finale in the location he shoots it in really helps to drive everything home. This is a strange movie, one that asks you to think and which doesn't want to give up answers to its viewership without a fight but once it gets where it's going, the low budget and inconsistencies in the acting tend to get washed away in favor of the 'big picture.' Yes, much of this seems like 'crazy for the sake of crazy' but it really does do quite a good job of tying it all up at the end. There's a point to all of this, and the fact that it takes the chances it does with its tactics, combined with some impressive camera work and some interesting acting, means this one will likely find more of an audience with the arthouse crowd than the grindhouse crowd despite a few horrific elements.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe image looks pretty good for the most part. Shot on video this was obviously a low budget production but enough care was put into the compositions and what not to overcome that. The fluid camera work is well reproduced here and there are no problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement. As is common with a lot of shot on video material, there is some shimmer, but outside of that the movie's colors are well reproduced and detail is solid. This looks better than you'd probably expect it to, really, it's a well authored release of some good looking source material.
The only audio option on the disc is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track. Overall it's problem free, offering up the dialogue in perfectly audible quality and not suffering from any screwy levels or hiss or distortion. Range is sometimes a little bit limited but otherwise, Asylum Seekers sounds quite good here on DVD.
Extras are slim, limited to a still gallery, a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Breaking Glass DVD releases, and a short film called And The Woods Fell Silent Again. Clocking in at 15:36 this short follows the exploits of a guy who comes across a pretty dead girl in the woods. Who is she? How did she get here? Did she make out with a chick before she was murdered? It's a fun little short and a nice inclusion on the disc as Rania Ajami directed it as well.
The Final Word:
Extras are slim but the presentation for this oddball mix of horror, comedy and social satire is pretty solid overall. Low budget movies going straight to DVD are a dime a dozen but this one offers up some seriously intriguing originality in terms of plot and storytelling which definitely helps make it stand out. It's not a perfect film, in fact sometimes the flaws are more than a little obvious, but the good seriously outweighs the bad. Fans of surreal black comedy who don't mind a touch of the macabre would do well to give this one a shot.
