Susan Granger’s review of “Stonehearst Asylum” (Millennium Entertainment)
In 1899, a recently graduated doctor, Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess), accepted an assistant position at the remotely situated Stonehearst Asylum, where 200 mentally disturbed members of Victorian England’s distinguished families, including a relative of the Queen, are incarcerated. Welcomed on Christmas Eve by its dour superintendent Dr. Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), he is informed that the institution’s methods are progressive- in accordance with the non-traditional belief that if they treat psychotic patients with compassion, as if they were sane, they will eventually rise to that expectation.
Dr. Newgate is immediately bewitched by elegant pianist Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale), a trembling hysteric who was committed after allegedly assaulting her husband when he forced his abhorrent sexual preferences upon her. She warns him that things are not as they seem – and then he begins to have suspicions about enigmatic Dr. Lamb’s menacing gatekeeper/bodyguard (David Thewlis), a depraved professor (Brendan Gleeson), the previous administrator (Michael Caine), his head nurse (Sinead Cusack) and what’s really happening in the subterranean dungeon beneath the Gothic façade of this medieval madhouse.
Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” it’s melodramatically scripted as a psychological thriller by Joseph Gangemi and heavy-handedly directed by Brad Anderson (“The Machinist,” “Session 9”), enlivened only by the illustrious cast and Tom Yatsko’s gloomy, evocatively atmospheric cinematography.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Stonehearst Asylum” is a ham-fisted, forgettable 4, serving as a horrific reminder about how far mental health treatment has progressed.
