Dark Nature

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.

Perhaps when I took my seat, waited twenty minutes through darkness and up came a DVD menu on the cinema screen wasn't exactly what I expected. The film had a very limited cinema release (i.e. twice a week for a month in Cineworld, and that was it) so I was determined to catch at least one showing. When beginning to describe the film, low-budget doesn't scratch the surface, the whole movie no doubt filmed entirely on the Southwest coast of Scotland in the film-makers' back garden. It's a horror/slasher flick in all fragances but it fails badly to pin the woes of the killer on a "you're killing the earth, so we're killing you" twist. It's obvious that although the film tries its very best to be serious (it fails), the dialogue makes numerous nods to slasher films of yore (such classic lines like "He wasn't strong enough" and "The Earth fights back"). Why in God's name didn't they go all out B-movie slasher tribute style, I don't know - because the narrative strengths (if they exist) lie completely in the moments in the film where the killer is honing in on his prey. All in all, the film ends up lamehat because it indeed takes itself far too seriously when it really had no chance at all with the kind of budget it had. Gets a better rating because of the reasonably convincing gore and the slightly present "so-bad-it's-good" factor, but overall the producers should have thrown the script in the writer's face and said "bring back some GOAR!".

Saw Dark Nature in a busy Glasgow cinema too and enjoyed it. It has a good balance of Hitchcockian suspense and psychotronic-style death scenes i.e. close-ups of axes in heads; humorous expressions of shock on actors' faces. Some nods to Herschell Gordon Lewis in there too maybe. Yes, you can tell it was made on a small budget and the acting at times was a little bit suspect but the location is stunning and adds a lot to the atmosphere of the movie, which is the point I guess considering its title. Some nice music included in it too. As mentioned in one of the other posts, the use of the bear trap could possibly be the finest in cinema history.

Family holidays may frequently be a recipe for disaster, and this simple and effective thriller takes this maxim to its natural conclusion. A moderately dysfunctional family of mum, new boyfriend and kids drive out into the countryside to visit her mother for a holiday. Little do they know what they are getting themselves into.

Director Marc de Launay and writer Eddie Harrison combine to produce a delightfully nasty and violent thriller, which bears all the hallmarks of classic 70s exploitation cinema. This is not the only influence though, with nods also to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Gus Van Sant in restrained and sparse mode, and to horror maestro Dario Argento.

With red herrings, an appreciable sense of false revelation, a tasty dose of gore and a clean, clinical, functionally efficient feel to the picture, this is enjoyable fare. The dialogue is stripped of flannel, everything has a reason to happen despite an overall feeling of ambiguity and the direction shows an interesting ambivalence towards the central characters which poses more questions than it answers.

Dark Nature is a pleasing B movie. Small aims, nicely realised.

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!