Check into the Sanitarium with Our Top 11 Insane Asylum Horror Films
Steve Barton
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12 Monkeys
Bruce Willis and a frantic Brad Pitt scored big with 12 Monkeys. Directed by Terry Gilliam, 12 Monkeys was a sci-fi thriller that took audiences on a futuristic post-apocalyptic joy ride. Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Jeffrey Goines. (He lost to Kevin Spacey’s portrayal of Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects. No shame there.) Pitt would go on to win the Supporting Actor Golden Globe. Aside from the asylum scenes, 12 Monkeys features time travel, conspiracies and undercover missions. It’s great fun and shows Pitt at his most manic. The crazier he gets, the more you enjoy him in this one.
Shutter Island
Any film with Leonardo DiCaprio is going to draw big interest, and Shutter Island was no different. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leo with Mark Ruffalo, Max Von Sydow, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams, Shutter Island, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, brought in nearly $300 million on a budget of $80 million. That’s impressive. Slick and mysterious, Shutter Island had a bit of a mixed reception, but the combination of DiCaprio and Scorsese kept audiences piling into theaters.
“American Horror Story: Asylum”
To enjoy “American Horror Story: Coven,” all you really have to do is suspend your disbelief that witches could exist, and the whole show seems plausible. With “Asylum” you have to go way beyond that. Set in Briarcliff Mental Institution, “American Horror Story: Asylum” is a veritable cornucopia of horror, featuring possession, surgical experimentation, a serial killer, alien encounters. Hell, Anne Frank even turned up for two episodes. Couple this with perhaps the hottest sex scene to open a television season ever (featuring Jenna Dewan-Tatum and Adam Levine) and Jessica Lange leading a nuthouse sing-a-long of “The Name Game,” and “Asylum” proved to be an incredibly horrific good time.
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