Darkness Reigns

One thing i DESPISE in a "paranormal documentary" movie is when the paranormal happens,and the characters,who have been looking for the paranormal,refuse to believe the paranormal. ALL the cast and crew horrifically does,yet these idiots are shocked every five seconds by demon activity. It's like they stopped believing/forgot what the hell happened as soon as they turned around. Every instance was a new instance of them being shocked that the paranormal was paranormaling-- they were constantly being surprised that the haunted house was haunted. I wanted them all to die for their sheer stupidity alone.

I love horror. I love bad horror. There are even some incredible extremely low budget horror that were made out of someone's basement. This was worse. The first 30 minutes were okay. Casper Van Dien did good and he was enjoyable to see and he was the only reason I even gave 3 stars. Then when the demon started attacking the quality dropped like a lead balloon. Horrible effects, horrible acting, it was painful to watch. Based on review here I gave a shot and I regret it.

I am an expert horror watcher. I know what works and what doesn't.

It must be more difficult to write a horror movie than I imagine, because I think most people are not twisted enough to understand what makes a good horror as well as us horror fans.

I don't mind a bit of dark humor, but once you go down the path of parody, even a little, you are making a horror comedy, not a horror movie. This movie skirts that line.

Another thing horror writers need to understand is that we the audience need to feel there is SOME chance the protagonists will survive, and for a plausible reason. If the Big Bad can just kill anyone or everyone, any time it wants to, then the rest of the movie is just about thinking about creative kills, the intrigue of how to get out of it, how to survive, is gone. This makes for a bad movie.

The other thing you don't want to do in a horror movie is exposition. This movie is filled with exposition.

This movie flirts with horror, then does not deliver. It also flirts with sexy nudity, then does not deliver. Do the writers not understand?

All that being said, I still want to encourage people to make more of these independent horrors, but don't be NICE, don't be typical, its not going to work.

If you want a superior "trapped in an abandoned building", supernatural horror, watch Grave Encounters (2011). Its a movie that takes itself seriously as horror.

This film is about the opening of a documentary where the film crew, covering behind the scenes footage of a movie in the making, captures an extreme paranormal event as it happened.

Yeah, this ain't that great but I didn't think it was awful. There's not much of a script and the acting is subpar. However, the story has a twist and I can't recall seeing one that is similar. Not say there isn't another film like it. I just can't recall one.

"The Shinning" seemed to have been an inspiration for some of the scenes but this is nowhere near the same quality. The whole film teeters on a fine line between watchable and unwatchable. In the end it was watchable for me.

This is independant, low budget film and it fairs well in that category. If you can handle watching films like that it may very well be worth your time.

...but I'm rating it accordingly to what it actually is. It's not a nine compared to The Deer Hunter, obviously, but I reckon it's a fair and appropiate note when comparing this decidedly modest film to other cheap-ish B-Z efforts in the horror genre. Just the meta elements and the obvious self-awareness that permeates the whole thing dignifies it enough, in my eyes, to warrant a high rate from me, if only to try and compensate for all the unfair 1s and 2s it's going to get from people who will judge it from its admittedly lackluster cover art without bothering to actually watch the actual film.

Some unexpectedly good and credible performances from certain cast members too, by the way. That caught me and my wife by surprise. I guess we were expecting something so dreadful -we've had a bit too many of those lately, including a couple of high-profile but very overrated productions- that getting instead something actually watchable from a moderately low-standards point of view was kind of a nice and welcome surprise.

Special kudos to Casper Van Dien for getting the joke and agreeing to play along, by the way. We got a couple of good laughs at his expense, but in a good way. That's what B-moviemaking should be about after all, in my humble opinion, and that's what we got here, so, that's were that nine came from in the end. Keep 'em coming.