Should be renamed, The Revenge of WHY’phoid Mary…
The long winded Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary, is a rather strange beast indeed, and is Nimrod Zalmanowitz’s cherry-popper. It’s clearly a low-budgeteer but the “digital intermediate colorist,” turned director, has opened up with a bit of a mish-mash, in this unattractive horror attempt, where it starts off “decidedly average,” and descends into “distinctly hellish” by the end. The strange thing is, it appeared to be an almost acceptable first feature for the new director, but as it started to show signs of promise, it then took a turn for the (even) worse, by trying to confuse the hell out of us with poor writing and miserable shots at cleverness, and you can forget the Typhoid Mary make-up. What was that all about?
- Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary
- Directed by
Nimrod Zalmanowitz - Cast
Rosalind Ashford, Paul Bright, Cameron Chiusano - Release Date
17 September 2013 - Grade: D-
If I hadn’t watched the final 40 minutes, I would have been a touch more favourable with Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary, but sadly, I did witness the final act and an arduous task it was. My BS detector was alerted right at the start, with some cliched “lets talk into the camera and give our backstory, but pretend like that isn’t what we’re actually doing” routine, which I’ve seen just once too often. Even so, I set it aside and soldiered bravely on. The acting wasn’t what you would call strong, but it was by no means bad. In fact, there were one or two decent moments from the main trio. My spider-senses started to tingle again when one character was pouting heavily for the camera, while declaring “I don’t like being filmed.” Yeah, right! The poor writing kicked-in when Mark asks Andy if he can ask him a question, to which Andy replies from nowhere “what would a nice girl like her, be doing with a guy like me”? which just did not sound right at all, under the circumstance (you’ll understand if you see it for yourself).
*****
There were the scenes in the hospital as they begin their investigation, where the camera lens appeared to have a dark shadow or something, because it was almost like looking through faulty binoculares. I’m not too sure what happened there. One of the first witnesses was this old gentleman who acted like the old preacher, Kane, from Poltergeist II. Except he was unintentionally funny. Which leads me to another scene with the same old guy. He jumps from a building, which is witnessed by Mark, who runs to try and stop him but he’s too late. Suddenly Andy is on the phone telling him to go somewhere and Mark doesn’t think to mention this little nugget to Andy. In fact, Mark doesn’t look to be giving a sh*t.
The best (worst) scene was with the absolutely wacky guy who gives the duo a small bottle of some sort of psychotropic drug along with a pointless backstory, about where it originated from, plus they don’t use it for anything anyway. But said headcase suddenly goes batsh*t crazy for no apparent reason. He’s sitting down all excited about finding this drug, then he’s all in Andy’s face about nothing I could make sense of. Next there was the scene where Mark and Andy need a boat, and use some pot as currency, then on the way to the island Mark declares “that was bizarre.” Dude, what an understatement! I could go on and on so I’ll stop here.
This film is filled with strangeness that might one day make it some sort of classic, (like when their “Exorcist Specialist” gets assassinated while trying to warn Mark about something) but it won’t happen in my lifetime. I really wish I had something good to say about this film, because, while it’s fun pointing out the “not good” parts, I would much rather be telling people how good certain things were. I honestly wish it were better written.
Review by Ed Blackadder Lead Entertainment Writer
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