Kaleem Aftab The List Apr 26, 2019 1/5

What could have been an interesting horror character study... is destroyed by tortuously labored dialogue and a sluggish pace.

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Prairie Miller Long Island Press Mar 26, 2007

A little like Jack the Ripper in outer space.

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Rex Roberts Film Journal International Feb 22, 2007

Despite a superb cast, artful set design and seductive cinematography, Asylum remains a lovingly lensed missed opportunity.

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Jonathan Kiefer Sacramento News & Review May 12, 2006 2/5

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Tom Long Detroit News Sep 16, 2005 B-

Patrick McGrath's screenplay, based on his novel, has moments big and small, delivered in appropriate dollops of awfulness.

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Terry Lawson Detroit Free Press Sep 16, 2005 3/4

It's a movie you fall for or you don't, and like Stella, I am not ashamed I did.

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Piet Levy Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sep 15, 2005 2/4

There is nothing to Stella's character -- or any of these characters, for that matter -- that you can relate to.

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Ian Grey Orlando Weekly Sep 15, 2005

So obsessed with rendering Patrick McGrath's exquisitely twisted Gothic novel as a refined affair that it forgets less ambitious pursuits, like sussing out a way to keep us awake.

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Chris Hewitt St. Paul Pioneer Press Sep 15, 2005 3/4

Based on Pat McCabe's moody novel, Asylum has an over-the-top feverishness that suits its premise.

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Jeff Strickler Minneapolis Star Tribune Sep 15, 2005 2/4

Once characters' actions lose credibility, it's hard to empathize with them, no matter how well the roles are played.

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Philip Martin Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Sep 15, 2005 C

...oh, look at all the crazy people.

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Matthew Turner ViewLondon Sep 10, 2005 3/5

Marton Csokas ... comes across as a hybrid of Russell Crowe and Clive Owen in full-on brooding mode and has a genuine chemistry with Richardson that goes some way to explaining why she stays with him as a long as she does.

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Marc Savlov Austin Chronicle Sep 4, 2005 3/5

The film wryly wonders whether the lunatics have taken over not just the asylum but the entire world as well.

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Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Sep 3, 2005 C+

A troubling psychological drama about illicit passion leading to tragedy.

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Sara Michelle Fetters MovieFreak.com Sep 3, 2005 2/4

In Asylum, the first time Richardson and Csokas give into their longings I almost wanted to laugh, the whole scenario so insipidly silly I almost couldn't believe Mackenzie filmed it.

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Jean Lowerison San Diego Metropolitan Sep 3, 2005

It's a lost cause.

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Jeff Vice Deseret News (Salt Lake City) Sep 2, 2005 2/4

The film manages to turn potentially interesting characters into caricatures and potentially heady material into soap-opera melodrama.

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John Beifuss Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) Sep 2, 2005 '2.5/4'

A sort of perverse update of an overwrought Barbara Stanwyck-Bette Davis melodrama...

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Connie Ogle Miami Herald Sep 2, 2005 3/4

The film, with its uniformly terrific cast, stern Gothic overtones and steady but measured pacing, is a crisp, old-fashioned delight, eschewing cheap tricks for repeated tiny pricks of unease that work up to a continuous gnawing dread.

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