Dark Nature

Hi there, saw this at cine world on Friday, it was packed, which is something special for 'local produce' above the blockbusters!! Loved the genre nods and homages to argento and co. Creepy and funny and looked stunning. Story was a bit thin but that comes with the territory and a few bits of 'hammy' acting were well overshadowed by the brilliant Mackenzie guy and Imogen Toner who the daughter, pair of them well scary! Great scenery too and locations but don't know if the film's content will help the tourist industry at all! Punches well above it's meagre budget in my book in all departments! Definitely worth checking out for genre fans and those further afield! Good effort!

Firstly I cannot believe I spent £5 to purchase this DVD... Daylight robbery...

The DVD case itself seems as if this could be a good film to watch, false advertising at its best...

"Tense, twisted, shocking and very bloody." BBC Movie Cafe "Pulls out all the stops... Sinister, sparse and enigmatic" The List "Ticks all the right slasher boxes." Evening Times "Has 'Cult Following' written all over it." Daily Record.

At this moment there is a big scandal into football match fixing, where is the investigation into film reviewers? How much are they being paid to lie to the public? They would make great politicians...

Bafta Award - New Talent Awards - Nominated Best Director Winner - Best Director International - HD Festival Winner - Best Cinematography - International HD Festival.

Who ever made these nominations and awarded these awards must have been on pure Crack! Someone needs to investigate them too..

I really enjoy my films and watch plenty of them, take this from me, save yourself a £5. Don't waste 76 mins of your life watching this... Or buy it as gift for someone you really secretly hate, so they have to suffer.

The plot is..well there is no real plot.. characters aren't explained... i'm left asking myself his relevance here is what? "Very Bloody" hmm no... Kept finding myself checking to see how long I had left to watch...

Thankfully The Matrix Reloaded has just came on tele, and has calmed me enough not to launch my tele, xbox and newly acquired Dark Nature DVD through my living room window...

Many of the other reviewers have given this film various marks over 6/10 which to me is completely baffling. Like others have stated this film was on in cineworld for one Friday only with 2 showings. We decided to take the risk with an unknown due to the unappealing range of Hollywood films in at the moment. judging by the larger audience it had to be made up of either people involved with the film or others who plumped with the risk of an unknown effort.

I'll start off with the positives - it was just over an hour long. the film actually started about 9.20 and we were back in our flat by 11. If this film had been 2 hours long I fear I would've been in the "leavers" category, which is saying something as i even sat through Gozu!! The Gory parts were done reasonably well for such a low budget film although after viewing it you've got to wonder whether or not the whole budget was blown on this! The negatives are plentiful. First and foremost, the storyline was awful, plain and simple. Throughout the whole "film" there is not one iota of an explanation given as to why certain people do what they do. From the typewriter moment at the start, to the tarot cards to the ending with the crossbow - it didn't really fit together to make a competent plot. They are obviously trying to show that everyone has it in them to kill another human being, all it takes is a trigger - but the trigger is never inserted into the storyline. Senseless killing is OK if you go down the route of having an insane serial killer but this seemed to be trying to portray the opposite and failed badly.

Another huge negative was the standard of acting. Only the gamekeeper gets pass-marks for his acting in this even though he only had about 5 lines. The rest of the cast were horrendous beyond belief - I doubt many of them would get a shot on Emmerdale it was that bad. I am maybe being harsh as i haven't seen them in anything else so it could be the case that they were working with what they were given - which wasn't much. the dialogue is shocking, the writer of this nonsense should really hang his head in shame.

A third big negative for me was the lack of imagination in terms of shooting on that location. They obviously had a beautiful spot to work with but didn't utilise it properly. Most shots were bland and ordinary which served in a descriptive manner rather than adding anything to the movie itself. It could have been so much better if a photographer had been used to get the best out of the location.

In summary I feel like this was a really poor effort . I cant condone people shouting in the cinema but at the same time if i had paid £7 for that i would have been raging. Luckily i have an unlimited card so i can afford some stinkers. I can assure you that if River City ever decide to make a late night episode with a serial killer on the loose it would beat this effort hands down.

Don't be fooled by the low budget - there are plenty of gory surprises in this bloody thriller about a family holiday gone horribly wrong, as well as a sprinkling of red herrings and twists.

Director Marc de Launay contrasts the shocks with lingering shots of the deceptively peaceful scenery (the setting is Cumbria but it was filmed in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland), but the accompanying score never allows the edge-of-the-seat tension to drop.

This is one for the genre fans - unlike in Hollywood slashers, there are close-up shots of the wounds and spurting blood. Not to mention a hands-over-the-eyes finale involving the optimistic setting of an ancient animal trap...

Dark Nature is an admirable albeit flawed attempt to replicate the genre film making of the U.S that dominates our multiplexes. The film is a considerable achievement when you consider the budget involved and respect has to be shown for getting a Cineworld release, something most Scottish films can only dream of. As for the film itself, while I don't agree with delusional users who dare to make comparisons with Dario Argento's work, it's certainly more palatable than most art house fare churned out by Scottish cinema at present. The casting of the film is by in large good, with Imogen Toner, Niall Fulton and Vanya Eadie putting in solid performances. Direction while somewhat choppy at points is indicative of a first feature director and low budget, while the DOP work is solid. Whether intentional or not 'Dark Nature' does entertain the audience, something the Scottish film industry forgot how to do a long time ago. Most problems in the film occur due to the script, lending weight to the old adage that you can't make a good film from a bad script.

Films such as 'Dark Nature','The Dead Outside' along with the superior 'Outpost' represent an interesting new development in the Scottish film industry, namely production houses attempting to make effective genre films which are commercially viable. It's worth considering that studio's such as New Line cinema were built by genre fodder such as the Nightmare on Elm Street series, lets hope the three production companies involved in the aforementioned films evolve in a similar manner.

On a side note I'd also like to thank the punter with the bout of Tourette's syndrome who shouted at the screen for reminding me why Glasgow people are amongst the most ignorant cinema goers in the UK.