I don't want to say that I'm a fan of the female prison genre of films but I sure have seen a lot of them. "Jailbait" goes up there with the best of them. It touches all of the bases. The story is well told and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Its cast very appealing, especially a very dreamy Sara Malakul Lane. "Jailbait" delivers the goods.

The Asylum are notorious for making and releasing bad movies, often terrible, so expectations were relatively low viewing Jailbait. Jailbait is far from great and is going to leave people very disturbed in a negative way, but for The Asylum it is one of their more tolerable and least amateurish movies. The setting is suitably gritty and cold, actually looking and feeling like a prison setting, while the filming matches that and is complimented by some fairly stylish directing from Jared Cohn. The music score pulsates with moodiness and tension, bringing foreboding to scenes that need it while avoiding the danger in being too obvious. To me it didn't feel overbearing or repetitive, another danger for a score in the style the music is composed in. And the acting is better than average, in fact it's quite good(usually the acting in Asylum movies is so bad it's not worth expanding on sometimes) the best being Sara Malakul Lane who is very affecting as Jailbait's most identifiable character, and Steve Hanks who seems to be enjoying himself as the sleazy warden and brings some menace to him as well. Jailbait despite these good things also shares a lot of problems. The story, which had a lot of good ideas, doesn't have a lot to it. A lot of the movie felt like one brutal scene after another strung together and when there was some storytelling like at the beginning it isn't just clichéd but it lacks depth- attempts at emotional moments didn't feel so natural or properly believable- and doesn't ever really ring true. Especially at the beginning, which often was so insultingly ridiculous non-stop for about 15 minutes that there was the temptation to turn the movie off(with me that didn't happen, otherwise that wouldn't have been fair).

Of the characters, the only really engaging character was Anna, and Lane's performance is a big part of why, Anna mental journey and transition is very touchingly portrayed- nice to see some hint of subtlety and hope in a not so subtle or hopeful movie- that you do identify with her and hate characters like the warden. Sadly despite the acting the other characters don't register being rather sketchily written and without any real spark, the warden has some colour and threat to him but that was more from Hanks' performance than the character. The script is just as shallow and the dialogue has a lot of banality and can feel stilted, again like the story it is swamped by the subject matter and by the content. Speaking of the content, with the rapes, drug use, girl gang fights and beatings Jailbait is very violent and brutal, which did give it a hard-hitting edge initially. The problem is that while prison is most likely to have fighting, beatings and maybe drugs depending on the level of security the prison is the movie generally and in the end did come across in places as too brutal and rather too much to take, so much so it and what the character goes through to overcome her mental pain and journey swamps almost everything else. It will leave a bad taste on some people's mouths, hence why the term "not for the faint hearted" is in the review summary and others will question how much of Jailbait is realistic, there may be prisons with rape and predatory guards but most likely not that many and certainly not to this extent. In conclusion, not bad but not great, it looks competent and is competently acted(especially by Lane and Hanks) and directed and the score is good but the brutal content swamps the story, characters and script to the extent that they barely resonate. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Anna Nix (Sara Malakul Lane) kills her step father in self defense. She is sentenced to be in a nubile prison sexplotation film filled with drugs, shower scenes, a rapist warden, and girl/girl action. Oh yeah, she plays a cello.

The acting was what one would expect from an Asylum film as they used their regular stars. The dialog wasn't great, but if the object is to watch 30 year old Sara Malakul Lane undress looking like 17, then the film achieved its goal. There is no watching the film for any deep underlying message, nor would I call it a film about redemption. It is a prison girl film. Not as great as "Chained Heat" but meets the requirements.

Perv guide: F-bombs, sex, rape, girl/girl full frontal nudity (Sara Malakul Lane, Erin O'Brien, Jennifer Robyn Jacobs + others)