A group of researchers go to investigate an abandoned detention center which use to house many famous killers. Experiments had been done on the inmates and one of the deadliest, Darrell Coombs (Kosmenko) is somehow still there. The idiots wander off and get captured and killed as Coombs dispatches them. Bordering between torture porn and a slasher film, this low grade junk wouldn't move the meter for either genre. The absurd script is only upstaged by the lousy production and uninspired acting and directing. There is a little gore but it is of the who cares? variety. This wouldn't, and couldn't scare a soul. Even the downbeat ending can't supply a chill. Avoid.

It's been a long, long time since I've last written a review on IMDb, but after watching this "film" I simply felt compelled to. OK, so this is not your average crappy slasher where five or six people get lost in a forest (or a building or whatever) and swiftly get killed because they act like complete idiots. No, this has got to be absolutely THE WORST horror film of all time, and I'm not using this term lightly. I've seen films like Howling 7, Nostril Picker, Dr. Rage (aka Nightmare Hostel), to name a few, and all of them look like masterpieces when compared to Psycho Ward. To use an original but effective music parallel - compare Beethoven with Britney Spears and the gap between the two doesn't even come close to the difference between, say, Howling 7 and this one.So, what is this about? You have a plot summary on the main page, so there's no need to repeat it. An abandoned prison, a bunch of idiots getting killed and (surprisingly) rather cool killer (really big guy with a mask and some tattoos), you've seen it all before. What stands out is that every aspect of the movie happens to be the worst ever.First, the actors. Obviously, with the budget these guys had you surely can't hire Lance Henriksen or Michael Rooker, so I guess they had to settle for a couple of friends, who in turn obviously were highly unimpressed with the "screenplay", so at every moment everyone seems to be bored out of their minds. Even when they're about to get killed. The direction is also the worst, but at least you'll get a few laughs out of it. For example, there's a scene where this girl is running from the killer and she hides in a small room with some shelves. So the killer comes in, checks the shelves, sees that she's not there and leaves the room. Sure thing, the camera pans upwards and reveals the girl lying on the TOP shelf, right in front of the killer. Or, near the end of the movie, one of the guys is lying mortally wounded, his sister is trying to open the door and get the hell out, and killer is slowly approaching her from behind. The guy sees him while he's talking to his sister, but amazingly continues to talk about that other crap and doesn't bother to warn her. That was probably a revenge of some kind, because a minute earlier there was a hilarious scene where they tried to attack him, and by some miraculous coincidence actually managed to hurt him and instead of finishing him with a knife lying on the floor nearby, the girls runs straight for the door and leaves her mortally wounded brother to crawl for the knife at the speed of about one inch per minute. These are not the only examples, far from it.Although the director is the worst, the "screenwriting" takes the cake here. You get all sorts of obvious clichés like cell phones not working and that "let's split up" thing, and this latter one is worth discussing alone. When there's four people left (there were six at the beginning), they absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt decide that they are going to stick together and not split up under any circumstances. Of course, immediately some guy separates and gets killed. This girl, who they thought was working for the killer and tied her wrists, for unknown reasons runs away, hides, runs into the killer and gets killed. Three of them left, another girl separates and dies. So, it's only the main character and his sister left, but they decide that the aforementioned girl must be still alive after all, so instead of running the hell away, they go about "saving" her (you can guess how that ended). But it's at this moment that the lead character says the historic line "They died because they split away! We're not gonna repeat their mistake!" - the point being, of course, that five seconds later he says to her something like "Stay there while I check this dangerous-looking thing here!" I haven't even mentioned the ugly "photography" and the horrible, horrible editing (for example, we hear a scary sound and then someone startles... about ten seconds later). This and other reviews should be enough to convince you that this movie is indeed absolutely terrible, but to really appreciate the levels of stupidity it achieves, you'll have to see it for yourself. To help you on this journey, there are two girls who get topless (unfortunately, it's all near the beginning of the movie), and I had a really great help from the Croatian translator who inserted random swears in almost every line of dialog and was constantly mistaking the gender of characters (this could have been intentional, but I guess he didn't even see the movie and was using the English subtitles as a basis for the translation - for this I am grateful!).

When I saw this movie at Blockbuster I was expecting an extremely intense psychological thriller and based on the cover I thought I'd be pretty scared. I have never been so wrong. This was the biggest waste of 86 minutes of my life that I will never get back. I would rather watch grass die. All of the characters were extremely annoying, we know nothing about them and they are the most horrible actors I have ever had the misfortune to witness. The filming made me look at the box wondering if it was made in the 80's, but no, they just suck. Anybody more than 10 feet from the camera didn't look like they even had eyes. The gore scenes were either not shown or incredibly unrealistic, using what looked like ketchup as blood. Ways that the killer murdered his victims was illogical, a nail gun does not have enough power to make a clean hole in your skull...?? Plus, we have absolutely no idea why he is killing all of these random irrelevant people, who scream like 5 year olds in a school play. The only reason we kept watching was to make fun of the horrible lack of plot and acting skills. The only reason most people would watch it is if they were horny teenage boys that liked the two girls flashing in the first 10 minutes and hoping it would continue. To their dismay they were sorely disappointed. Why on earth would anyone put this out on the market or bother to get it rated? Why would Lionsgate or Blockbuster spend their money on this crap excuse for a movie? Needless to say, this was the worst movie I have ever seen, and it basically SUCKED. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.

The abandoned location of the prison is decent. There is one very good effect involving a nail gun driving nails into a moving hand that is seamless, I don't know how they did it. There is one pair of nice looking breasts in the first few minutes of the film. There are a few nice exterior sunset shots. There are also about 4 good looking shots--none of which oddly are in Loinsgate's trailer for the film.That's it. Those are the good elements here. Super bad elements are the way over lit everything. It looks like old Scoop lights aimed at people. Acting is pretty bad but the writing doesn't deserve much better. Villain is stupid looking fat guy who almost trips coming down a set of stairs near the end. All the gore, other than hand effect is poor and editing doesn't help movie at all. Other comment about the generally very low video quality is true, have not seen shot on video stuff look this bad in a number of years. It is all nicely in focus though. Audio quality is super bad too, much post dubbing of noisy outdoor scenes early on, though once they get inside that stops and none too soon, it's like a foreign film before that, so much is dubbed. Lots of supposed Jump Scare moments none of which work. Padded credits at front and back to get the "film" to a feeble bare minimum lenght of 85 minutes. They did have a crane for some of the shoot but it's not very well used. This is barely passing grade film school stuff at best.So why does Lion'sgate continue to pick up stuff like this and put their name on it and hurl it at the horror audience? This one was finished in 2007 and only now in 2009/2010 getting released so maybe they bought it long ago or made a poor offer that the producer's had to eventually accept. Why why why? Because they don't care or understand horror films they just push the crap out there, I guess they are counting on the increasingly bad SAW films to retain some fan base. Only THE ASYLUM puts out stuff with so much contempt for the fans and Lionsgate should know better. It's really a shame on them as a company to show now pride at all in their output. The producers of this made a pretty amateur movie, they may not know how to make a better movie, but Lionsgate produces theatrical films and inherited a large library of films of some note. It's shameful. Unless it's a SAW film anything with Lionsgate's name on it is a rip off for fans and also hurt the market, and those SAW films are going downhill fast.