Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I've seen some very terrible horror movies in my time, and while this isn't the worst of the bunch, it's certainly in the lower half. The script starts off OK. A young doctor goes to a hospital as an intern, hoping it will vault him to a better job for him and his future wife. Cute huh? The movie then heads straight into the toilet when you realize that something is killing patients. Turns out that there's a demon on the basement that's harvesting people's souls. It's the job of the 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 1 security guard in the entire hospital staff to drag this mental patient downstairs, do a ritual that pretty much just involves cutting the tongue out, and then allowing the haunted house prop of a demon to come out and steal his soul through the magic of cheesy special effects. At this point the movie gets so ridiculously stupid, I was begging for it to be over. There was still an hour to go. It looked like a half an hour "Tales From the Crypt" episode that somehow got stretched into an hour and a half crap-fest. From Tiny Lister doing his best John Coffey (The Green Mile) impersonation to Tracy Scoggins playing the stereotypical frigid Nurse Ratchet, this movie fails in every possible level. I gave this 2 stars for only TWO reason. 1) His fiancé is pretty hot, she eased the pain a little towards the end and 2) The movie actually looks OK, a lot better than the current trend of horror movies being made with wal-mart quality home cameras.In the end, avoid this turd even if you have the Blockbuster movie pass (which I do, and I still felt cheated). As a bonus drinking game, you and your buddies take a shot every time Matt Stasi (Dr. James Bishop) shakes his head while talking. You'll be drunk 15 minutes into the movie.

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT* After watching "Asylum of the Damned", I got in my car and drove to the nearest bookstore. I came to the realization that there must be better ways to entertain myself than watching a braindead B-movie like this one. So I grabbed the latest Michael Crichton book, "State of Fear", with the hopes that my brain can be recharged and saved before it's too late."Asylum of the Damned" is lame. Yes. That's exactly the word you will use after seeing it. Like, "Geez, that was lame." Lame. So very lame. OK, so some demon lives in the basement of an asylum. Now that I've told you that, you can fast forward through most of the movie. This is one of those movies where the monster is a mystery to the main character but is obvious to everyone else. The hospital staff, the inmates, the director, and the audience all know that there is a big snarling beast in the basement. So what is the point of dragging this movie on and on? Yeesh. By the time our hero figures out that there's a possibly interesting movie hiding in the basement, the audience is sound asleep. They roll the beast out once or twice but he doesn't do much. They probably disturbed his naptime.Avoid this Asylum. Read a book.

If there was some weird inversed Oscar Academy awards festival this flick would win it all. It has all the gods, excellent plot, extreme special effects coupled with extremely good acting skills and of course in every role there is a celebrity superstar. Well, this could be the scenario if the world was inversed, but it's not. Instead it's the worst horror flick ever made, not only bad actors that seem to read the scripts from a teleprinter with bad dyslexia, but also extremely low on special effects. For example the devil costume (which by the way is a must-see), is something of the most hilarious I've ever seen. Whenever I saw that red-black so called monster on screen I couldn't hold my laugh back. And to top of things it looked like the funny creature was transported by a conveyor-belt. Do not do the same mistake as I did. Checking IMDB seeing that the movie was released in 2003, had less than five votes and thinking: -"Well, it's worth a shot, can't be that bad".Yes it could.I'm not even going to waste more words on this movie.

This is a fantastic ride for true horror film buffs. The writing is an achievement for the ages and the acting is superb. It may take some determination and patience to watch but if give enough effort one can come away with seeing a true "original" horror flick.