Mockbuster Review: A fascinating look inside The Asylum’s filmmaking machine

PLOT: Tired of making corporate videos while his movie ideas are repeatedly rejected, filmmaker Anthony Frith reaches out to independent production company The Asylum and, to his surprise, is hired to direct a new adaptation of The Land That Time Forgot on a production schedule of just six days.

REVIEW: We’ve been hearing a lot of internet-to-Hollywood success stories lately. Aspiring filmmakers build large followings through YouTube channels, Reddit stories, podcasts, or viral short films, then use that momentum to land feature directorial debuts. That’s the path that led to projects like Talk to Me, Backrooms, Obsession, and several others.

Still, those success stories are the exception rather than the rule. For every filmmaker who breaks through, countless others have the skills and ambition but never manage to gain a foothold on social media. They make fun videos that never reach an audience beyond friends and family. They pitch ideas to producers, only to be met with rejection after rejection. Anthony Frith was one of those filmmakers.

After film school, Frith found himself with little choice but to direct corporate videos. Desperate to make a feature, he reached out to The Asylum, the independent production and distribution company best known for low-budget mockbusters like Transmorphers, Triassic World, Master of the Universe… the list goes on and on. Most filmmakers who reach out to a production company this way can expect either a polite rejection or no response at all. Frith, however, got a meeting, and The Asylum agreed to give him a shot at directing its latest production, a new adaptation of the public domain Edgar Rice Burroughs novel The Land That Time Forgot. It’s the sort of opportunity most aspiring filmmakers dream about but one that almost never comes from a cold email.

The catch: Frith would have to make this movie, which would feature an extensive list of locations, naval vessels, a submarine, and attacks by CGI dinosaurs, on a production schedule of just six days. The documentary Mockbuster follows that six-day production from beginning to end, providing a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how The Asylum operates.

The executives at The Asylum have no illusions of grandeur about what they do. During their on-camera interviews, they openly describe their output as “shitty movies for people with bad taste, and alcoholics,” movies that are “barely above porn.” But they have perfected a formula that ensures they rarely lose money on a movie – they make things for the right price and the right length (90 minutes, which is “as long as any movie should be.”) Frith is told that if he follows their process, he’ll have the chance to make a fun movie. If he fights the process, if he tries to get artsy and creative, it will all fall apart. But Frith has the mindset that any filmmaker in his place should have: that you have to start somewhere, and there’s no shame in starting at the bottom. Making a bad movie is better than making no movie at all.

Of course, making something this ambitious in just six days soon has him worrying that he’s not a good enough director to make something fun within the Asylum process, and not even bad enough to make something that’s “so bad, it’s good.” It’s said that if you blow it on an Asylum movie, you’ve basically crippled your career, and that’s what Frith begins to fear is going to happen to him.

You don’t have to be a fan of The Asylum to enjoy Mockbuster. If you have any interest in the filmmaking process or curiosity about how things work on the lower rungs of the ladder, this documentary is well worth checking out. It’s an engaging study of cinematic wish fulfillment that also pulls back the curtain on how an Asylum production actually comes together, and how Frith struggles to work within those budget limitations and time constraints. (Circling back to those success stories mentioned earlier, there are also a couple of appearances by Talk to Me co-director Danny Philippou, with him and his brother Michael even visiting the set of The Land That Time Forgot!)

Bonus: The Asylum executives would be very pleased to see that Frith’s documentary comes out at a running time of 1:29:57. It’s a 90 minute movie, just how they like it.

Mockbuster opens in select theatres and on digital platforms today, July 10th.