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Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes
Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: 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. Read more
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A competent exercise in atmospheric bosom-heaving, if not plausible storytelling. Read more
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Even at its most melodramatic, Asylum plays as if someone had slipped a pair of restraining devices on the material and then yelled 'action.' Read more
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Richardson is the reason to see Asylum. A lot of what happens doesn't really make sense, yet her intensity hooks us. Read more
Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: The makers of Asylum pretend they're making an art movie, and although the film has the trappings, the story is mostly Hollywood. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The morbid interiority of McGrath's novel has been turned into distressed gloss, and while it's awfully nice to look at, it never once comes close to the dangerous emotions of the real thing. Read more
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: It's too over-the-top, too lurid and at times simply too silly to represent any kind of valid commentary on the repressive '50s or the way in which institutions tend to destroy rather than cure. Read more
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Nothing wrecks the mood of a high-toned British period piece about erotic obsession quicker than an unintentional laugh. In which case, prepare for Asylum to be derailed by snorts in all the wrong places. Read more
Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Asylum is a semi-watchable, lurid melodrama. But it could have been a dynamic, probing psycho-drama. Read more
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Rigor and beauty are nothing without a point, and if the point of Asylum is that a little romantic obsession goes a long way, 100 years of cinema have made sure that we knew that already. Read more
Gene Seymour, Newsday: Benefits from barbed exchanges, gritty period detail and its fine cast. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Mackenzie takes too many such shortcuts in a complex psychological story. Read more
Manohla Dargis, New York Times: In the dreary, claustrophobic drama Asylum, Natasha Richardson plays a married Englishwoman who falls for a loony-bin hunk. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Asylum had promise. But it's bad enough to make one wonder just who had the loose screws -- the characters, or the people who filmed them? Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: An overwrought Gothic melodrama that has a nice first act before it descends into shameless absurdity. Read more
Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle: Richardson commands every scene she's in. Read more
Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Once characters' actions lose credibility, it's hard to empathize with them, no matter how well the roles are played. Read more
Jessica Winter, Village Voice: Mackenzie and Marber opt for an anonymous viewpoint of clinical detachment, which generates about the same psychodramatic tension as reading the DSM-IV. Read more
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: I know it's all about erotic obsession, not logic. Still, it's just so darn annoying to watch this attractive, seemingly smart woman throw her life away for some (admittedly rather hot) sex in the greenhouse. Read more
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: There's nothing remotely seething -- or sympathetic or provocative -- about this overstuffed movie, which bears the unmistakable signs of a film too in love with its own fetishistic production values. Read more