Of all the elements that go into the making of a movie, by far the most difficult to do well is the plot line. Most of the other elements in a movie (lighting, cinematography, music, acting, etc.) can almost be guaranteed if you have enough of a budget to purchase the appropriate talent. But getting a good story? That's almost always a crap shoot. Certainly there are some writers who have a better track record than others for producing quality stories, but it's never a shoo-in.
And nowhere are these truths more apparent than in ELOISE. Overall, the fundamental production values within ELOISE are much higher than they are for the average of this sort of movie. There are at least two "namebrand" actors in the movie: Eliza Dushku and Robert Patrick, both of whom have long and well-established careers and both do a decent job in ELOISE. Brandon T. Jackson is a little less well-established but he certainly does a respectable job with the thin material he is given.
Lighting, sound and music are all professionally polished.
A particularly interesting element to this movie is that it's not merely BASED upon an actual insane asylum, but almost everything about the asylum is completely real. Even the name of the movie itself is the actual name of the real place, and much of the movie is really shot there (at least what of it is still left standing today).
Here's a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_(psychiatric_hospital)
Here's a for sale listing if you'd like to buy one of the remaining buildings which appears in the movie: http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/19494723/30600-Michigan-Avenue- Westland-MI/?linkcode=31060
Here's a YouTube video which claims to show images taken at the asylum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNbF3FNNXpo , although it's impossible to know if these images are actually from the asylum for a certainty.
It's worth a Google search and rooting around the Internet for a while. The history of the place is fascinating and the "insane asylum" part of it is actually only one aspect of something that evolved through many different incarnations and purposes over its overall 145 year existence.
ELOISE's reputation as a haunted place is an open question to be answered by those who believe in that sort of thing. There have been many medical advances over the last couple of hundred years but we would naturally view some of the medical practices that historically happened there as horrific by today's standards. The whole field of psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness, and even the definition of mental illness itself, have more or less invented themselves during that same time period. Given the arrogant but popular tendency to judge other eras by our own standards so in vogue nowadays, this certainly provides a context of rich material to draw from. Whatever horrors actually happened at ELOISE are largely a function of insufficient funding, incessant overcrowding and the primitive state of what science was involved. I'm sure future generations will look back upon the present day with similar horror.
So ELOISE certainly has a lot of things going for it.
And then the whole thing is topped off with one of the worst plot lines EVER, even for the "haunted insane asylum" ilk.
ELOISE brings nothing new or original or even interesting to the haunted asylum genre. Fundamentally it confabulates and intermingles the notion of ghosts and some bizarre variation of timeshifting/time travel. It's as if the director said, "It's an insane asylum, right? So let's just throw a bunch of insane, disjointed and disconnected crap at the screen and hope for the best." What ELOISE calls horror is mostly just throwing our heroes somehow back in time and distorting practitioners in bygone eras as monsters gleefully enjoying torturing people rather than simply doing the best they knew to do at the time.
And there are a few more crimes against cinema, in no particular order:
Dictated by the plot line, Robert Patrick is woefully underutilized and is clearly a ringer brought in purely for his name and face. I would be surprised if his total on-screen time added up to more than 5 minutes.
Brandon T. Jackson, unbelievably, is literally used as the token- black-guy-who-gets-killed-first trope.
In a desperate attempt to make an un-scary and tiresome movie more scary, there are constant, blinding strobe flashes (supposed to be lightning happening outside) to create "atmosphere" but only serve to either give you a headache or an epileptic seizure.
I wouldn't exactly call GRAVE ENCOUNTERS a top-quality movie, but it's plot line had a lot more going for it in terms of the haunted asylum concept then did ELOISE.
And nowhere are these truths more apparent than in ELOISE. Overall, the fundamental production values within ELOISE are much higher than they are for the average of this sort of movie. There are at least two "namebrand" actors in the movie: Eliza Dushku and Robert Patrick, both of whom have long and well-established careers and both do a decent job in ELOISE. Brandon T. Jackson is a little less well-established but he certainly does a respectable job with the thin material he is given.
Lighting, sound and music are all professionally polished.
A particularly interesting element to this movie is that it's not merely BASED upon an actual insane asylum, but almost everything about the asylum is completely real. Even the name of the movie itself is the actual name of the real place, and much of the movie is really shot there (at least what of it is still left standing today).
Here's a Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_(psychiatric_hospital)
Here's a for sale listing if you'd like to buy one of the remaining buildings which appears in the movie: http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/19494723/30600-Michigan-Avenue- Westland-MI/?linkcode=31060
Here's a YouTube video which claims to show images taken at the asylum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNbF3FNNXpo , although it's impossible to know if these images are actually from the asylum for a certainty.
It's worth a Google search and rooting around the Internet for a while. The history of the place is fascinating and the "insane asylum" part of it is actually only one aspect of something that evolved through many different incarnations and purposes over its overall 145 year existence.
ELOISE's reputation as a haunted place is an open question to be answered by those who believe in that sort of thing. There have been many medical advances over the last couple of hundred years but we would naturally view some of the medical practices that historically happened there as horrific by today's standards. The whole field of psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness, and even the definition of mental illness itself, have more or less invented themselves during that same time period. Given the arrogant but popular tendency to judge other eras by our own standards so in vogue nowadays, this certainly provides a context of rich material to draw from. Whatever horrors actually happened at ELOISE are largely a function of insufficient funding, incessant overcrowding and the primitive state of what science was involved. I'm sure future generations will look back upon the present day with similar horror.
So ELOISE certainly has a lot of things going for it.
And then the whole thing is topped off with one of the worst plot lines EVER, even for the "haunted insane asylum" ilk.
ELOISE brings nothing new or original or even interesting to the haunted asylum genre. Fundamentally it confabulates and intermingles the notion of ghosts and some bizarre variation of timeshifting/time travel. It's as if the director said, "It's an insane asylum, right? So let's just throw a bunch of insane, disjointed and disconnected crap at the screen and hope for the best." What ELOISE calls horror is mostly just throwing our heroes somehow back in time and distorting practitioners in bygone eras as monsters gleefully enjoying torturing people rather than simply doing the best they knew to do at the time.
And there are a few more crimes against cinema, in no particular order:
Dictated by the plot line, Robert Patrick is woefully underutilized and is clearly a ringer brought in purely for his name and face. I would be surprised if his total on-screen time added up to more than 5 minutes.
Brandon T. Jackson, unbelievably, is literally used as the token- black-guy-who-gets-killed-first trope.
In a desperate attempt to make an un-scary and tiresome movie more scary, there are constant, blinding strobe flashes (supposed to be lightning happening outside) to create "atmosphere" but only serve to either give you a headache or an epileptic seizure.
I wouldn't exactly call GRAVE ENCOUNTERS a top-quality movie, but it's plot line had a lot more going for it in terms of the haunted asylum concept then did ELOISE.