INTRODUCTION: WELCOME TO THE CAFETERIA OF MADNESS
Every so often, a horror movie asks an important question. The Shining asked, “Can isolation drive you mad?” Silence of the Lambs asked, “What’s for dinner?” And Asylum Blackout—also known as The Incident, presumably because even the filmmakers didn’t want their names associated—asks, “What if you combined a struggling rock band with bad kitchen lighting and called it horror?”
The answer: 85 minutes of sweat, screaming, and more drooling than an open mic night at a methadone clinic.
Directed by Alexandre Courtès and written by S. Craig Zahler (yes, the same Zahler who later made Bone Tomahawk—so apparently everyone starts somewhere), Asylum Blackout is one of those movies that thinks claustrophobia and confusion equal terror. Instead, it feels like watching a health and safety video produced by Nine Inch Nails.
THE SETUP: WHEN YOUR SIDE GIG IS FEEDING LUNATICS
It’s 1989, and we meet three bandmates who are one bad gig away from busking on the street: George (Rupert Evans), Max (Kenny Doughty), and Ricky (Joseph Kennedy). Their musical careers are circling the drain, so they take jobs in the cafeteria of a maximum-security asylum for the criminally insane—because, naturally, that’s where dreams go to die.
George is the serious one, Max is the screw-up, and Ricky is… also a screw-up, but with worse hair. They cook food for murderers and sex offenders, because nothing says “rock ‘n’ roll” like serving Salisbury steak to psychopaths.
The inmates, doped up on pills, seem calm—except for one, Harry Green (Richard Brake), who looks like he eats drywall for breakfast. He stares ominously at George, because that’s what villains do when the screenplay can’t afford dialogue.
Then, during a particularly wet and gloomy day, the power goes out, the doors lock, and the asylum descends into chaos faster than a Denny’s at 3 a.m.
THE BLACKOUT: WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, PANIC LOUDLY
The entire premise hinges on one power outage. You’d think the world’s most dangerous inmates might be in a facility with a backup generator. Nope! This asylum apparently runs on two AA batteries and wishful thinking.
As soon as the lights go out, the guards vanish, the radios die, and every lunatic in the building decides it’s time for an interpretive dance of murder. It’s chaos—but not the good kind of cinematic chaos. It’s the kind of chaos where you can’t see anything, can’t tell who’s screaming, and start wishing someone would just kill you to end the confusion.
Meanwhile, our rock-star chefs barricade themselves in the kitchen freezer (which honestly sounds like a solid plan). But one refuses to leave, because he’s the kind of horror-movie character whose IQ hovers somewhere between “toast” and “wet sponge.”
THE HORROR: BLOOD, SWEAT, AND BAD LIGHTING
Let’s be clear: Asylum Blackout doesn’t “build tension.” It traps you in a flickering hallway and yells, “Be scared!”
The movie wants to be gritty and visceral, but it mostly just looks like someone smeared Vaseline on the camera lens and turned on a strobe light. The power outage means nearly every scene is shot in near-total darkness—great for atmosphere, terrible for anyone who enjoys seeing things.
When the violence hits, it’s loud and incoherent. There’s biting, stabbing, burning, and a guy gleefully eating his own fingers like he’s auditioning for MasterChef: Psych Ward Edition. But because everything’s filmed in handheld blur-o-vision, it all blurs together into one big “what the hell is happening” montage.
At some point, you realize the most horrifying part isn’t the murder—it’s the sound design. Everything is either deafening metal shrieks or prolonged silence. It’s less “tense thriller” and more “someone accidentally hit record at a Tool concert.”
THE CHARACTERS: SANITY OPTIONAL
Our hero George, played by Rupert Evans, is the kind of protagonist who exists purely to react to chaos with mild concern. He spends half the movie shouting “MAX!” and the other half being covered in other people’s blood.
His coworkers don’t fare much better. Max loses his nose (and most of his dignity), Ricky gets impaled in what can only be described as a very committed performance, and William (Marcus Garvey) wanders in and out of scenes like a lost extra from a different movie.
Then there’s Harry, the finger-eating ringleader, who may or may not be real. He’s the kind of villain who makes you miss Freddy Krueger—at least Freddy had personality. Harry just stares, grins, and occasionally chews on himself like beef jerky that won’t quit.
By the end, George is hallucinating so hard that reality and nightmare merge, which might sound clever—until you realize the movie’s been just as incoherent since the opening credits.
THE TWIST: SHUTTER ISLAND CALLED, IT WANTS ITS ENDING BACK
In the final act, George—now naked, tied up, and losing his mind—discovers that Harry’s been dead the whole time. Yes, that twist. The “You were crazy all along!” revelation that horror movies drag out when they’ve run out of budget and ideas.
Apparently, George hallucinated Harry’s involvement in the riot, which means either George went mad from trauma or we, the audience, were pranked by the director. Either way, it feels like a cheat—especially after spending an hour watching Harry chew scenery and fingers alike.
The film ends with George institutionalized, catatonic, and imagining he’s still in the cafeteria. Which is appropriate, because anyone who sits through this movie will feel the same way: trapped, disoriented, and desperate for daylight.
THE DIRECTION: STYLE WITHOUT SUBSTANCE (OR LIGHT BULBS)
Director Alexandre Courtès, previously known for directing music videos, clearly loves style. The problem? He mistakes style for substance.
Every shot is designed to look edgy: tilted angles, flickering lights, and endless close-ups of sweaty faces. It’s visually impressive for the first five minutes, but when the entire film is shot like a Nine Inch Nails video directed by a drunk security guard, it stops being cool and starts being migraine-inducing.
Courtès wants us to feel trapped and claustrophobic—but mostly we just feel lost. It’s like being stuck inside a panic attack filmed through a soup can.
THE WRITING: WHEN S. CRAIG ZAHLER FORGOT TO TAKE HIS MEDS
S. Craig Zahler, who later wrote the brilliantly brutal Bone Tomahawk, was clearly still finding his footing here. The script for Asylum Blackout feels like it was written on a napkin in between drum solos.
The dialogue is minimal, the character development nonexistent, and the pacing somehow both frantic and lethargic. The movie teases deeper themes—madness, guilt, loss of identity—but then immediately buries them under layers of screaming and flashlight beams.
By the end, you’re not sure whether you’ve just watched a psychological thriller, a slasher, or a music video that got lost on its way to MTV2 circa 1998.
FINAL THOUGHTS: MENTAL ILLNESS ISN’T SCARY, BUT THIS SCRIPT IS
Asylum Blackout wants to be a gritty descent into madness—a bleak meditation on sanity, violence, and survival. Instead, it’s a 90-minute exercise in cinematic confusion that leaves you wondering if the true horror is your own decision to hit “play.”
It’s noisy, murky, and self-serious in all the wrong ways. By the time the credits roll, you don’t feel scared—you feel like you’ve survived something traumatic.
If the goal was to make the audience feel as insane as the inmates, mission accomplished. Unfortunately, that’s not a compliment.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Burnt Chicken Heads.
Because sometimes the scariest blackout is the one where you forget why you started watching in the first place. 🔥🔪🧠
