A Darker Reality

With the recent flow of found footage and torture porn movies flooding the market I thought the genre may be receding and we might,just might return to genuine scary and well thought out horror. Well I was wrong.They're still churning em out I.m afraid.Tha sad thing is that this film could have actually been SO MUCH BETTER!!! Daniel Baldwin,never being an Box office draw shows why...overacting creates what should have been a menacing character but results in a totally laughable villain.The tension was non existent and the long long drawn out torture scenes are so exploitative and quite sick,it just leaves an empty pit in the stomach and you have to ask yourself,Why I am bothering?Well I did and I wasn't wrong.Film runs out of ideas.logical ending and sadly fails in every dept.Don't waist your time.Don.t say I didn't warn you!!!

Usually I have a strong stomach for gore and guts... but this movie is just disturbing. I hope to God there is no one alive that would actually be that depraved. THe acting of the girls was very convincing , you felt their pain, the acting of everyone else was boring and uninteresting. I wonder why well known actors would take on this kind of movie. If the point of the movie was to make the make you want to vomit over the reality that this could actually happen, then it rates a 10. I couldn't watch the whole thing. I felt depraved even watching as much as I did, if I would have watched the entire movie I would feel like I was OK with what was happening... guess you'll have to watch it and decide for yourself.

While A DARKER REALITY is the very definition of what many would call "Torture Porn," it is not nearly as disturbing as many would have us believe. I was expecting much worse, and in all honesty, hoping for much worse. To me, A DARKER REALITY is very far from reality. That is the main reason I don't view it as a very disturbing film. I'm not saying that some of the content is not disturbing, it's just not portrayed in a real way. Yes, women are tortured and they do suffer, but much of the suffering is them just chained up together trying to figure out how to survive. I'm not trying to take anything away from this film, or for that matter I'm not trying to lessen the disturbing parts. Many people will find this film quite disturbing, but for those of us who have "seen it all," so to speak, will not be that disturbed by its content. In my eyes, it's neither a bad film nor a great film. It's just a bit above average, especially considering it was only made for an estimated $500,000.

So in conclusion, A DARKER REALITY is not for everyone. If watching women being tortured will disturb you, then stay clear. While I have seen much more disturbing films, a lot of people have not and will not like this film, hence its 3.6 rating at the time of this review. Remember...it's only a movie. If you have sat through films such as HOSTEL or SAW, then you shouldn't have much trouble sitting through this one. Not that A DARKER REALITY is as good as either of those films, because it's not, but...well, you get the point (hopefully). I think I've rambled on long enough. A DARKER REALITY is a decent film in the "Torture Porn" category, better than a lot of others. I give it a solid 6 out of 10. Worth at least 1 viewing, if you like these kind of films.

A few years ago Chris Kazmier and Christopher Hutson put out a film called "Dark Reality." It was a very different type of film; mostly improvised, it dealt with several women who had been captured by a lunatic and imprisoned. It focused almost entirely on the women in captivity. Strong stuff that was difficult to watch -- the IMDb page now claims the cast and crew thought it was "a joke," but if you watch the film and see what the actresses put themselves through, it's no joke.

Now a few years later, Kazmier is back with an expansion of the original film called "A Darker Reality." Caught it on VOD recently in advance of its DVD release. The film takes the original premise and expands it. It shows us the actual psycho (played by Daniel Baldwin -- no spoilers there, that's his entire character) and shows the police attempts to find and capture him and save the women.

Let's get the problems out of the way first -- the police stuff is bad. Pretty much "Movie/TV Police 101" -- gruff detective gets a partner he doesn't want, etc. But much of the movie focuses on the trapped women and the narrative of an escaped survivor, and holy crap, it is harrowing. You really feel the utter helplessness of these women and it's legitimately disturbing. And somehow, having Daniel Baldwin as the psycho makes it even a little creepier.

It's not perfect and there are things that stretch credibility even in this type of film (for example, the psycho manages to have an absurd amount of victims in one area) and while the ending is a punch in the gut, it's a little confusing. And as you can tell from this review, it is definitely not for everyone. But it is very well done, and I am definitely looking forward to purchasing this film when it comes out on DVD so hopefully get some "Behind the scenes" things.

Having sat through such horror offerings as August Underground, A Serbian Film, all the Vomit Gore movies, the recent American Guinea Pig, Subconscious Cruelty, Melancholie Der Engel etc I guess you could say I'm at the pinnacle of ultimate horror experience. It doesn't really go above those movies unless you want to venture into real footage of humanities follies and Darker Reality just isn't up there with the big boys. That said, its surprisingly decent. The cop scenes are very pedestrian as a few others have said, but the victim and antagonist scenes are quite effective. The acting is easily an 8 on the 10 scale. I don't know what it is about those Baldwin brothers but all of them disgust me a little bit, their big fat faces and clunky look, so having one of them in here helped the plot for me, Daniel Baldwin is pretty good in this. A lot of the film actually doesn't show any physical body harm at all, most scenes are after the fact, or relayed via other means, but there are many shots of chained up women in a very distressed state and i really liked how they had the females adapt to their situation trying to stop each other screaming or doing anything that would bring the killer back into the room they were incarcerated in. As a whole, the film works pretty well, and I can see how for many here it was too much, but for those into the more extreme horror or those that enjoyed films like The Seasoning House, you'll probably love this. Grim, disturbing, and a little bit nasty. Ooh yeah! :-)