Dark Reel

(2008) Dark Reel SUPERNATURAL HORROR

Co-written and directed by Josh Eisenstadt that has Edward Furlong stars as struggling actor who wins a contest, Adam Waltz working with scream queen actress, Cassie Blue (Tiffany Shepis) in this low budget, straight-to-rental horror film about slasher killings coming back to haunt and kill after six decades later killing each person during a filming. Lance Henrickson also stars as the film's producer, Connor Pritchett. For the few scenes Lance had in this movie, it was obvious it was nothing more than a cash grab for him. As if we hadn't seen this before.

That's right...it's a bore.

Ahhhh, it be a very big bore. The cast is lacking so much. When the best performer is a horror movie actress who is best known for her screaming and baring her chest, then you know that the film is a drag.

Once a mighty well known actor, now looking quite sick or hungover - Edward Furlong is just awful to watch. His voice is a shriek in itself. His eyes are so puffy and his performance is so weak.

The script is like countless before it that are also weak.

Thinking of renting it? I think it's time to rent a good movie - like The Terminator or Aliens or best yet - Back To The Future.

At 1 hour and 40 minutes long, it's 1 hour and 35 minutes too long and the ending is rather dull.

In the 1950s, aspiring actress Scarlett May is brutally murdered. Years later (2006), the crew of "Pirate Wench" is being slaughtered. What is the connection between these two events? Is there one? "Dark Reel" is a surprisingly good film, with a great ensemble cast and featuring the best work I've ever seen out of Tiffany Shepis. I love Shepis in pretty much everything she does, but I really think this one goes above and beyond her normal duties. Along with her, there's also decent performances from Edward Furlong (who is not aging well), Lance Henriksen (also some of his best work in years), Rena Riffel and Tony Todd.

I found the stand-out performance to be from Jake Grace, who plays the onion-loving pirate Rhett Johnson. I don't know if I'm familiar with any of his other work, but I loved him here. More pirate action, more onions, please! The special effects were good -- quite good -- when it comes to the blood and guts. Some of it didn't look all that real, but some effects -- such as a sword through the back -- were impressive. Everyone really came together on this film.

Not really sure what to say about this one. It's just really good. I can't critique it, because there's not much to critique, just a a solid horror story from beginning to end with plenty of mystery mixed in (good luck guessing the killer -- I changed my mind multiple times). Hopefully we see more things of this quality from this cast and crew. Oh, and "Gnome Killer 2"? Funniest movie I've ever seen!

Dark Reel is severely damaged goods no matter how you look at it. It sucks because there's some good ideas trying their best to flourish beneath a mountain of sludge, but nothing of any value can breech the surface of this purely shitty B movie with scant traces of a decent outing. It starts off with a black and white prologue that looks like the only part of the film that wasn't shot with an etch-a-sketch. Scarlett, a young aspiring actress, is lured into a dark abandoned set warehouse under the pretence of an audition, and brutally murdered. Fast forward about six decades, where a young groupie (Edward Furlong, looking like a sack of poo warmed over) wins a walk on role in a sickeningly trashy B movie monstrosity, starring a legendary scream queen (Tiffany Shepis, also a legendary scream queen in real life). It's not long before so,done with ties to the murder in the prologue starts skulking around the set after hours and hacking people to pieces in ways that are as tasteless as they are cheap looking. The film has one redeeming quality, if you are a fan: Lance Henriksen. He plays Connor Pritchett, schlock movie producer and general whacko. Lance seriously plays the part like he has no idea what the script is, making up verbal diarrhea on the fly, undergoing titanic mood swings and displaying the coherency of someone with serious issues. It's fun to watch him crash and burn, and even in the most awful poop material like this, he still shines, as bats@$t crazy as he is. There's also a cop played by Tony Todd who acts just as unstable as Lance, and Todd rides the wave of his awfully written dialogue and poor direction like a sheepish pro. This is literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and the funny thing is that it didn't have to be. The premise itself is great, and even on the couch change budget it was stuck with, they could have at least tried. But no, they threw in the bloody towel and instead of a gem or even an admirable failure we get this monumental piece of festering garbage instead. I had to keep myself occupied in any scenes without Henriksen by hitting half speed fast forward so the characters sound like chipmunks. It says a lot about a flick when you have to do that. Avoid at any cost.

If you are really looking for that classic horror slash comedy movie that you grew up watching with a group of friends in the theaters, this may be one of those movies. It's about time someone made a movie like this, it brought back some good memories. I was expecting cheesy acting, bad editing, and choppy sound but none of those things ever happened. I have to admit that originally I had no desire to watch "Dark Reel". The only reason that I even watched the movie was because my wife was pregnant and for some reason she had to watch it because of the title. To my surprise it was actually very good. No matter how hard I tried not to like it I still got sucked in. Now I'm looking for director Josh Eisenstadt's next movie.