Left in Darkness

I caught this on cable the other night, and to be honest I wasn't expecting much. You don't expect much from Zone Horror, not after a while - there are an awful lot of Z-grade turkeys on that channel, but occasionally they do come up with a gem, almost in spite of themselves. This film isn't quite a lost diamond, but it's not at all bad.

If nothing else, the writer and director have a bit of imagination. The plot goes like this: Celia goes to a party, messes about with a ouija board, then gets raped and murdered. Most films would take a drearily predictable tack at this point - Celia has to ensure that her killer is brought to justice, yadda yadda. You can see half a dozen movies with that plot on any given evening, if you really want to.

But this film takes another tack. Celia finds herself in something like Purgatory, a dangerous place inhabited by creatures who will eat your soul, given half a chance. By working through the ghosts of her past, and working with her 'imaginary' friend from childhood, she has to try to escape and get to, presumably, Heaven.

The bad news is that the budget was obviously about seven dollars. Purgatory is represented by something that looks very like suburbia, and there is at least one scene too many set in the front of a car. Parts of the plot are slightly repetitive, too, and the dialogue isn't particularly memorable.

But - and it's a very big but - everyone involved obviously cared about this movie. The acting is more than competent, especially from David Anders as the morally ambiguous childhood friend, who is a rarity in this type of horror film - a really interesting character. The movie whooshes along at a good clip, the plot actually makes some sense, and I found myself genuinely caring about Celia's plight, which was totally unexpected.

The most surprising thing, for me, was the the director of this movie also did a couple of truly horrible films that I saw recently, It Waits and Sasquatch Mountain. This movie is, thank God, in a different class to those cheese-fests. Hopefully this means that Steven Monroe is getting the hang of this directing business, and we can expect more like this in the future.

Celia (Monica Keena of "Freddy vs. Jason") has always felt lots of guilt over the fact that her mother died giving birth to her. Now, as a young adult, she's mourning the recent death of her grandfather Joe (the legendary Tim Thomerson of the "Trancers" series), who raised her after her worthless father took a powder. She celebrates her 21st birthday by going to a wild frat party where she has the worst, and final, night of her life: she is drugged, raped, and dies of an overdose.

Now stuck in some kind of netherworld, she has to navigate her surroundings, not sure if she should follow the advice of her guardian angel Donovan (David Anders of 'Alias'), who saved her life as a child. While she tries to figure out how to get to Heaven, she must avoid beings known as "soul eaters".

This well-intentioned but resolutely average horror movie does subvert conventions in some ways (it's not really about righting wrongs committed in real life). But it spends too much time laying on the exposition and the ground rules (which is basically Donovans' job). Occasionally, there are some interesting visuals, and director Steven R. Monroe ("It Waits", "I Spit on Your Grave" 1 and 2, "The Exorcism of Molly Hartley") gives it a reasonable amount of atmosphere and pace. It gets most of its mileage from the sincere lead performance by Keena, and from the participation of ever-reliable Thomerson. Anders is fairly amusing in his role; Jessica Stroup ("The Hills Have Eyes II"), Chris Engen ('The Young and the Restless'), and Travis Van Winkle ("Friday the 13th" '09) co-star. Former "Bad Seed" Patty McCormack has a cameo as Celias' grandmother. And that's co-producer Stephen J. Cannells' daughter Chelsea as Tawnia.

Overall, this viewer would have to say that while he has seen worse than this, he's also seen better.

Five out of 10.

I was drawn to this film by it's interesting premise. Of course, as a straight to video film I wasn't really expecting much even though I hoped for the best. The film sat somewhere in the middle for me. It was enjoyable and somewhat interesting, but I couldn't help but feel it had much more potential than it displayed. Perhaps on a higher budget with a better script, we could have seen something really special. When the movie was over, I shrugged... I wasn't overly satisfied, yet not disappointed. But as far as straight to video films go, this one is definitely in the upper class.

And what was up with Monica Keena's lips?

By minimal I mean there aren't all that many characters to get to know, and there also are not all that many sets...so basically a horror movie with a very limited potential for kills. Still I thought it was done rather well, could have been better, but then again most horror movies could would have and should have been better. This one has a very pretty girl with a number of tragedies that have marked her life. Her mother died when she was born, her grandfather died the prior year she just wants to have fun on her birthday for once. Well she goes with a friend to a wild frat party, which is mistake number one and her friend hooks her up with an obvious scumbag. Why do gals prefer this scum who would do what he does to a guy like me I will never know, but that is just the facts. This guy precedes to take her to the basement and gets her to tell her sad story and after she passes out from the drug in her drink rapes her. Great guy, eh? Well the drug in the drink kills the girl and is the movie over...no! It has just begun as the girl must now try to figure out the afterlife as her grandfather is there, but he seemingly wishes to do her harm and also there is her guardian angel who tries to explain things to her, but he also seems kind of menacing as well. There are flashes of others in her life, things looking for her soul and she also has the ability to look back on the life she left behind and see the party still going on. Like I said not bad, just needed more, the girl is really pretty and she does a nice job. I could have used a couple of more venues as I get really tired of the frat house. From the back of the box I was actually expecting more of a darker version of an earlier film I enjoyed "Highway to Hell", still there are worse ways to spend one's time.

Pretty 21-year-old Celia (Monica Keena, who is very good at appearing traumatized, confused and panicked) goes to a frat party where a creep uses a date-rape drug on her. She dies from an overdose and awakens in a ghostly parallel world which, in spite of a lot of exposition, never gets as much of an explanation as it needs. She can see what's happening in the "real" world in mirrors and other reflective surfaces, but she can't figure out the complicated rules for getting into heaven, especially with all the demon-zombie types chasing her around. She is advised by a smug, inscrutable guy named Donovan (David Anders, who is perfect in the role) who claims to be the ghost who has been invisibly protecting her since childhood, formerly a child himself. Which begs the question: how and why would a person who died at age 8 grow into an adult after death? Celia's grandpa (the great Tim Thomerson) keeps popping in and out, sometimes as his kindly old self and sometimes as a snarling gray-faced corpse. In a real creative lowpoint, the ghoulies are called "soul eaters". This movie has a great professional look but is too complicated for its own good and violates its own internal logic on several occasions. If the dead "can't affect the living", as we're told, then how was the Donovan character able to pick Celia up and lift her out of the way of a speeding car when she was alive? And how is Donovan able to physically touch Celia right after he explains that nobody in the ghost dimension can touch her without her touching them first? Why didn't Donovan od something to prevent her being raped and murdered in the first place? These and other inconsistencies will probably distract you from the confused plot, but at least there's plenty of action and danger to propel things along. Swear words are used awkwardly in places that might cause unwanted laughter. The ending seems to imply that the story's most evil character has adopted a new identity in preparation for a future attempt on the soul of Celia's bimbo roommate, but this point isn't made clear. In fact, a lot of points aren't made clear. What was the bit about Celia's father thrown in there for? Why did he leave her, what was the nature of his briefly mentioned "sickness", and why did the writers think it was worth bothering with to have him make a quick appearance in the afterlife? Even with the "caught between life and death" theme, the movie doesn't have the intentional dreamlike feel of a story left deliberately illogical and surreal in the manner of CARNIVAL OF SOULS or JACOB'S LADDER; instead, it plays out like a script full of loose ends, cluttered with unhelpful details. Maybe viewers were meant to see it as the heroine's dream or delusion, rather than anything really happening in an actual place. The afterlife depicted in the BEETLEJUICE movies is more coherent than the one seen here. Though sloppy and admittedly no classic, LEFT IN DARKNESS is entertaining enough to watch and is certainly not among the worst horror efforts you've seen. Or maybe I should say it's not among the worst I've seen.