Jade’s Asylum – Fantasia 2019 Review

JADE’S ASYLUM is a new fantasy horror indie film premiering at Fantasia 2019. It has a very different take on storytelling which won’t be for everyone. Including me, though I did enjoy the visuals and the acting. Read more in our Jade’s Asylum review here.

Jade’s Asylum is a new fantasy horror drama. It’s a Canadian indie production and it premieres at Fantasia 2019, which is perfect for this genre-hybrid of a movie.

I really liked the style at first, but it does have an alternative way of unraveling the actual story. It absolutely isn’t an easy movie to watch and it does require a lot of its audience.

The production quality and the acting lifted it a lot, but the story didn’t really work for me overall. Read more in our full Jade’s Asylum review below.

Can we please move on?

The actual runtime of Jade’s Asylum is only around 1 hour and 15 minutes. This isn’t long at all, which is often a positive thing since it means the director and editor have managed to cut the story very tight.

For Jade’s Asylum, this wasn’t exactly the case.

Within the first 15 minutes or so, you will get to see the same scenes play out so many times that it does start to drive you a little mad. There is a lot of symbolism and much of the story is happening in the mind of Jade.

Also, the official plot makes Jade’s Asylum sound like a very straight forward horror story which is downright misleading. In fact, this alone will have you trying to understand a story that essentially isn’t what’s playing out in Jade’s Asylum. This alone made me felt a bit tricked. 

Instead of making it sound like Poltergeist set in a new place, just tell me that it’s about Jade. At least then I’ll know where to look instead of trying to figure out what’s going on.

And, for the record, the acting is really good in Jade’s Asylum. The only “real” problem is with the storyline and how the plot is presented. Some people might love this, but I was not in the mood for it at all. 

A genre loving director

In many ways, director Alexandre Carrière’s love of horror is obvious in Jade’s Asylum. Personally, the characters simply weren’t developed enough for me, which meant I didn’t care too much about their well-being (or lack thereof).

Also, the very spiraling way of telling the story was not my cup of tea. It took away from both the characters and the very good practical effects. Instead of being able to focus on these good things, I found myself getting increasingly irritated when the same scenes kept replaying over and over (and over!) again.

I get that it’s showing us that the main character is stuck on this, but it just did not work. Besides, there were several stories (or issues, if you will) that Jade seems to be fighting. And these seem to almost be struggling against one another for attention.

Again, this might be the point for the characters, but for the audience, it doesn’t do much.

Jade’s Asylum at Fantasia 2019

The writer and director of Jade’s Asylum is Canadian director, Alexandre Carrière. He already has quite a few movies on his resume. Many of them are TV movies and a lot are also in the horror genre.

I’m sure there’s an audience for Jade’s Asylum but I think it will find the most success when people have an inkling of what they’re about to watch. I did not and it no doubt affected my overall opinion of the movie.

I do, however, want to point out yet again that the practical effects worked really well and I enjoyed the cast. They all gave good performances that made me want to find out how it would eventually play out.

Jade’s Asylum had its world premiere at Fantasia 2019 on July 13, 2019.

Details

Director: Alexandre Carrière
Writer: Alexandre Carrière
Stars: Morgan Kohan, Sebastian Pigott, Roc Lafortune, Drew Nelson

Plot

Somewhere in Costa Rica, by the sea, in the huge, ominous jungle, lies a mutilated body. Abandoned emergency vehicles are parked nearby. Jade (Morgan Kohan) is lost and confused. Flashback: the young woman is on holiday in a luxurious mansion with rich Americans who just want to party with sexy girls and plenty of blow. Isolated from the group, Jade is haunted by psychotic visions of her late father (Roc Lafortune). Meanwhile, there is a series of mysterious attacks by figures covered with vegetation, dripping with sap, and armed with machetes, who are both terrifying and curiously beautiful. Are they ghosts? Demons? Or simply a manifestation of nature arising to silence the obnoxious folks who are disturbing it?