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For some reason, satisfying the audience and gaining fame has never been Brad Anderson’s forte. His underrated masterpieces such as Session 9 and Transsiberian could have gained wider notoriety and struck the right chords if he had put more effort into them. He had a hand in shows such as Fringe, The Wire, and even Boardwalk Empire, showing that he has flair for working in shows, but had no potent reason to aid shows. Even The Call and ‘Vanishing on 7th Street’ have seen some degree of fame and notoriety because of the hand Anderson had in it. I personally knew how good Anderson’s work is when I saw his episode of Masters of Horror titled Sounds Like. All of Anderson’s work fundamentally leaves me with more questions than answers. For the amount of fame he ought to have gained, he managed to gain respect from all the wrong people. Nobody leaves Sessions 9 or The Machinist feeling the same for the workout algorithm of the man. Stonehearst his flat masterpiece, slowly succumbing to being simply sonorous and baseline orchestrated, with no effort to extract perspiration from his fans suffering with Mania Censorosa feeling.
The first scene of Stonehearst Asylum builds up the environment for a film that, unfortunately, never comes to fruition. A young woman by the name of Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale) is on display before a panel of medical professionals, and the head doctor (Brendan Gleeson) appears to suggest she is mentally sick. Anderson captures the scene trickily, suggesting that the men in the room are intimidating, hinting at a storyline depicting the amount of effort that was put in by the medical community to suppress the energy of a so-called ‘weaker’ sex. Female sexuality as a whole is an illness that needs some proper curing. It is right to say that this initial scene, too, is a trick. As Gleeson’s crazy doctor puts it, quoting Poe, Believe nothing you hear, only half that you see, and nothing that is told to you.
Fade into a now foggy asylum, where the story leaps. Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) is the Jonathan Harker of this story, the man coming to the dangerously lit castle in the middle of the night.
The looming sense of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Shutter Island keeps their echoes alive. This feels like a film with a lot of themes to explore but not much depth whatsoever, like a cover that is far too good to be true.
No one wants to be outdone, and that’s exactly why Newgate now serves as the new physician at the New Stonehearst asylum for the affluent. It is a place where the fancy can turn a blind eye to their troublesome relatives, like that uncle who thinks he is a horse, and drop them at Stonehearst. It makes me wonder, Where do the people with so much affluence go when they need to rest? Certainly, this place isn’t peaceful, and my thoughts are shared by Silas Lamb as portrayed by the brilliant Ben Kingsley. Misery has a way of clarifying one’s condition.
Something is severely wrong when Monk Lamb is trying to woo Eliza out of terrible Stonehearst and toward the escape route. The other nurse has proven to be loving on a deeper level and cares a little too much. A man taking the place of the damsel in distress persona off her head is butchered. So Ganemi’s Stonehearast Asylum is not about defiance or abuse of power, it is as tame as it gets. Captivating, but devoid of any further development.
The lack of thematic elements wouldn’t matter as much if Stonehearst Asylum had more personality which is to be expected from a talented Anderson running the show. Stoneheart ought to be a Hammer movie with dark corridors and oppressive shadows. While it is possible that the production design is authentic, and one can appreciate Anderson’s ambition of staying faithful to his period, it results in a film that is surprisingly visually dull. I do appreciate that Anderson does not rely on jump scares or other more modern horror elements, but he doesn’t seem to replace those with anything as intense as this story needs. Of course, it’s not Anderson’s fault that Gangemi wrote such a shallow and repetitive script for example, there really should have been at least 12 scenes of Newgate attempting and failing to persuade Graves to leave.
It is much more discouraging to see ‘great’ sections that do not come together nicely instead of watching a film that fails to work at all. Witnessing great actors such as Kingsley, Caine, and Thewlis take part in a Poe adaptation should have been among the most anticipated films of the year and could have definitely been the movie to make Brad Anderson a renowned director. I am certain that time will give worthy credit to Brad Anderson, but it will also ensure that this movie is forgotten.
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