Review

Roosevelt Asylum, Rockford Illinois, has been closed for quite some time following a patient riot, a number of deaths of both staff and patients, and quite a few missing bodies. The building has fallen into ruin and as such is a red flag to local teens wanting some spooky after-dark action. Naturally the place is also haunted.

Dean and Sam receive a text message from John Winchester and head on into darkest Illinois to discover just what is going down with the asylum and its inhabitants. The place has a reputation for a very good reason, a number of deaths have resulted from people visiting a certain room on the South Wing. Much dark creepy fun times ensue. Ready to check into the nuthouse?

Asylum starts well, and just when you figure you have the skinny on the plot it goes in a completely different direction. Got to love an episode that plays with viewer expectations, and slam-dunks preconceived notions. Or that might have just been me.

Director Bee has it exactly right with this episode. The interiors of the asylum are dark, there’s plenty of dust in the atmosphere, and the place drips that good old tension like a brought one. Loved the use of outside lights to illuminate the interior, allowing us to check the decaying surrounds while still putting things into a sort of twilight glooming effect. Like most of the episodes thus far, Asylum scores heavily with the locations and their use throughout.

The episode follows the normal Supernatural pattern. We get a pre-credits shock scene (expect the unexpected there), and the Bros investigating the background to happenings before finally checking into the confrontation toward the end. Writer Hatem paces Asylum exactly right, and gets the investigation and action sequences exactly so. A few of the previous episodes have missed this balancing act, and both are needed to make the series what it is. Hatem keeps it tight, doesn’t throw in anything unnecessary, and gets the one-liners coming at you naturally. Superb scriptwriting, maintaining the very high standard expected.

Naturally the Bros have to check out an abandon Asylum, there's a revenant on the loose who should be committed

This episode heavily references the remake of House On Haunted Hill. While that movie was less than stellar, and bares nothing like the warmth of feeling that horrordom has for the Vincent Price original, the nod towards it is pretty obvious. We have a closed down asylum due to a patient riot, a doctor doing mucho strange experimentation, and vengeful ghosts out to party down hard on mortal arses. Where the Supernatural episode gets it right is jumbling up the various ingredients and taking a whole new approach to the subject matter. End of day, Asylum is a much better watch than the Boredwood shambles that was the remake of Haunted Hill. Loved the use of the quick edit for the shaking head, can’t get enough of that effect in either the movie or this episode.

The episode concludes with further strengthening of the John Winchester plot arc, this time he actually calls the boys, at last the plot arc is at last going somewhere definite. Supernatural is balancing this aspect well, but the concept is starting to stretch out a bit too much, considering additional arcs are being introduced pretty well every second episode.

Okay there is one glaring plot hole, and I was forced to deduct a point from the rating due to it. The finding of Dr Ellicott’s body was simply too trite for its own good. The local police conducted a thorough search of the asylum for the missing bodies, but failed to discover Dr Ellicott. Dean manages to find it in a cupboard pretty quickly as the plot and time constraints required, hence we are left with the feeling that either the Illinois police are, to a man (and woman) totally incompetent, or the whole force were having an orange whip day during the investigation (reference to The Blues Brothers there for the slow learners amongst us). Considering previous episodes (Hook Man comes immediately to mind) have indicated that marauding spirits don’t need to be buried in the place they are haunting, this was a weak plot development and should have been handled better.

Music-wise we get a single track this time, but I was happy with the selection, Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Hey You”. The season might need to pay more attention to our required mullet rock fix in future episodes, would be my call.

I had a good time with Asylum. The episode had the creepy atmosphere going down throughout, and some pretty cool effects with the decomposing spirits inhabiting the Hospital of Terror. The balance between investigation and action is about right, and there’s no lag whatsoever. The only issue I had was with the rather large plot hole mentioned above.

Out of interest, the topic of vengeful spirits got some airing through the sensationalised account of that house in Amityville, and the lesser-known but equally frightening reports of what has become known as the “Smurl Haunting”. From 1985 through 1987, the Smurl house in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, become the scene for a supposed horrific haunting. The ordeal of those involved received wide coverage from the media and three “exorcisms” were conducted to expel unwanted presences, though there are no records from the local Catholic Diocese to support the notion that “exorcisms” were conducted. The common element between the Amityville and Smurl case was that the investigations were conducted by self-proclaimed ghost hunters and demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Since both Warrens have largely been discredited through books, online articles, and by serious psychic investigators, we can draw our own conclusions as to the validity of both cases.

Naturally, a book and a movie were made on the Smurl case, both named The Haunted. We have an article coming that once and for all exposes the Warrens as publicity-seeking self-promoters, who continue to delude those sections of the U.S population that at best can be called gullible. ScaryMinds might be a movie site, but we aim for some truth end of day. As Fox Mulder is apt to tell us, the truth is out there, but it’s not what the Warrens claim it to be.

Asylum receives the best possible recommendation, and is certainly another of the season 1 episodes of Supernatural that shouldn’t be missed. Book time on your DVD to catch this bad boy, and you won’t be disappointed. This one can be viewed as a standalone, though you will need to be aware of exactly what the John Winchester plot arc is about. The season simply continues from strength to strength, Asylum nailing another hour of Dean and Sam mayhem.