Originally premiering at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival as The Incident, music-video veteran Alexandre Courtés' mean and moody feature debut arrives on screens under the more accurate, less imaginative B-movie moniker Asylum Blackout. Yet even with the title change, the film loses none of its eerie ferocity in detailing the shocking events that unfold in a weather-beaten Washington state psychiatric hospital. Slow to start, yet positively relentless once the lights go out, it's a sadistic madhouse of horrors elevated by smart casting and competent screenwriting, also driven by a pervasive air of menace that never lets up -- not even during the surreal, memorably nightmarish climax.
Washington, 1989: Bandmates George (Rupert Evans), Max (Kenny Doughty), and Ricky (Joseph Kennedy) are in the midst of recording their first album. Though the money they make working in the kitchen of the Sans Asylum psychiatric hospital helps to pay for studio time, the eerie behavior of the inmates occasionally gives the job a certain element of danger. Fortunately, a massive window between the kitchen and the dining hall keeps the trio safely separated from the patients. But the lights go out during dinner preparations one evening, and then the security system malfunctions as well. To make matters worse, the inmates are ready to take full advantage of their newfound freedom, and one of them in particular has had his eye on the kitchen staff for quite some time. Before long the situation turns bloody, and it begins to look as if some of the staff may not survive the night.
An experienced visual stylist, Courtés gives Asylum Blackout a compelling surface aesthetic by alternating between the grimy personal lives of its aspiring rock-star protagonists and their antiseptic place of employment. Meanwhile, screenwriter S. Craig Zahler develops the conflicts both in the band and among the hospital staff. The result is a restrained setup that swells with pregnant tension as we're introduced to the inmates from the safe side of the protective glass that shields the kitchen staff. However, that deceptive air of sanctuary proves decidedly short-lived once lightning strikes, and the staff -- desperate to reach a landline in the days before cell phones -- realize that help isn't coming anytime soon. With long takes cast in thick shadows, characters who make sound decisions under duress, and the knowledge that one of the inmates has assumed the role of a malevolent ringleader, it's this section of the film that works best. We sympathize with the kitchen staff as they're reluctantly thrust into authoritative roles they're neither qualified for nor prepared to assume, and cheer them on as they attempt to put their petty differences aside in the name of survival. Meanwhile, Zahler and Courtés focus on the growing threat posed by the inmates, which allows them to get the absolute most out of Richard Brake and Darren Kent, actors whose striking features are used to maximum effect.
It's precisely at this point that Asylum Blackout takes a vicious turn that may prove off-putting to viewers who relished the understated, highly controlled buildup. Once the power surges, innocent people are slowly impaled, graphically disfigured, horribly burned, and flayed with potato peelers as they beg for mercy. Perhaps these are the sort of antics you might expect if the criminally insane stopped taking their meds and took over the asylum, but at times the suffering becomes overbearing in contrast to the rest of the film. It's been rumored that a few of the audience members fainted at the Toronto premiere of the movie, and while the onscreen violence in Asylum Blackout doesn't approach the kind of prolonged cruelty on display in something like the Saw franchise, it is directed with a vivid intensity that has the power to jar even the most jaded gorehound. So beware before checking into this sanitarium, because the sights that you see might just stick with you longer than you'd hoped.