As much as I dislike these shoddy shot movies with their questionable camera work and their supposedly "found footage" concept, then "Greystone Park" (aka "The Asylum Tapes") is definitely in the top five of the more boring and pointless movies in the genre that I have had the misfortune to stumble upon.
The story here, is as in so many other low budget movies, about a group of people venturing into a run-down, old, abandoned mental institution (or asylum, if you will) to investigate some alleged rumors about it being haunted.
Right, that is perhaps one of the most used and generic of story lines in the history of horror movies. And you'd think with so many movies with the same storyline that there would be a bigger chance for someone to actually get the recipe just right. You would, wouldn't you? Indeed, but "Greystone Park" swung and missed widely.
The movie is mostly just questionable camera work that was all over the place, and randomly interrupted by static noise to make the atmosphere seem all the more ghastly and scary. But it just didn't work. The movie came off as horribly rushed and forcefully pushed together in what seemed like an array of random clips.
I will say that the setting of the movie was actually what worked out the best for the movie. Although you'd think that a run-down and closed down mental institution would have its equipment and gear long looted and gone. But oddly enough, a lot of things were still there. Which just didn't really seem all that believable.
As for the acting, well people actually did good enough jobs with their given roles, although they were struggling hard having no proper storyline to work with.
If you enjoy these types of movies, perhaps you can find something enjoyable here, as I failed to. If you, like me, want to be properly entertained by a movie with proper camera work, then you are better off looking elsewhere.
