Madhouse (2004)

By John Chard

We all go a little crazy sometimes. Straight to DVD fare it may be, but it has some merit as a spooker to make it worth spending time with. Plot finds Joshua Leonard as a psychiatric intern who arrives at Cunningham Hall Mental Facility and quickly finds that all is not as it seems. It’s hardly an original concept, that of a mental asylum housing something sinister, either supernatural or of human origin, but director and co-writer William Butler has a good feel for a chilly atmosphere, while he’s not scrimping on the shocks and terrifying imagery either. The asylum is a suitably depressing place, unhealthily cold to look at and the patients milling about the place are the requisite hot-pot of sad cases and the disturbed. Then there is the basement ward, of course, where the extreme cases are kept in cells, and it looks like something straight out of Hades. Jordan Ladd is on hand for eye candy and romantic thread duties, and Lance Henriksen adds his horror weight to the role of Governor of Cunningham Hall. It’s all very competently performed and constructed, the screenplay full of killings, dark corridor peril, secrets and a curveball twist thrown in as well. It doesn’t push any boundaries, so searching for anything new here will only end up in disappointment. Yet it’s stylish and creepy enough to warrant a night in with the lights turned off. 6/10