Dark Summer

I love horror/thriller movies. It isn't an exaggeration to say 90% of what I watch falls into that category. The other 10% is porn.

It takes very little to make me happy when it comes to these smaller independent type movies. It isn't even so much the movie that I enjoy watching. It's the fun of looking for those hidden gems. Sure, it can suck watching a movie that's terrible, but it's worth the risk because you might find that movie that's so good your sack shrivels up like a prune.

So even if the movie is terrible, I still enjoy it because it's all a part of the hunt.

Dark Summer, however, was garbage. Boring, no plot, bad acting. Just crap. I didn't even know the names of the characters. There was no explanation of what was going on or why. There was just a super-dooper scary ghost with a super-dooper scary hoodie. Ooooooooooo....

It was about an hour in when my pupils constricted and my body put me in a coma. When I finally woke up 4 days later I discovered that I had eaten the fingers off my left hand. There is also a large blood stain on the crotch of my pants but I'm to afraid to check what's causing it.

To start off, lately I've started to watch lower rated movies to find the hidden gems that may be out there. This experience led me to Dark Summer.

While the concept of the movie is intriguing, the movie itself fell short. The acting was not the greatest, however also not the worst. Possibly with a better script we could have seen some breathtaking shots from them unfortunately that's just not so. The camera work involves too many close ups, most of which are unnecessary, but is otherwise decently done.

For a horror/thriller the movie is just not there.

First of all, did Daniel have no parental supervision at all? This movie spanned a few days, and not a single adult was in that household except for Peter Stormare - the probation officer.

The acting was pretty good, especially for a low budget film with people I've never heard of. Though I have seen Peter Stormare in quite a few things like Prison Break. "Tell him, John Abrussie says goodbye!" hehe I have to say, there weren't any scares. But the end was an unexpected twist I gave this a 4-star rating. Even though it had good acting, it was boring. When only the last 2 mins or so of the movie are memorable, it's not going to get a high rating from me. 4 stars might be a little high. Watch it and decide for yourself. I can't recommend it.

Realistic expectations are important. You can't expect a fine dining experience at a fast food place. You can't expect an overnight stay in a small town to be as stimulating as a week in Greece. And you can't expect a straight-to-streaming movie made by relative unknowns to crack your list of all-time favorite movies.

With the proper perspective, however, this movie isn't bad. In fact, I'd say it's better than most of the scores of straight-to-streaming movies I see each month.

The actors were watchable, the direction was excellent and the story was just a little more interesting than that of the average teen psycho horror tripe.

It's like Disturbia. Or perhaps I should say you might be led to believe it should be like Disturbia, but completely different. One way is how it starts out. If you'll recall, in Disturbia we got to see the accident that killed the protagonist's father and the incident that set him off. In Dark Summer we pick up a story that already seems to be in progress and we discover the back-story in pieces so that initially we won't have any sympathy or understanding for our protagonist. The emotional connection comes later.

The pacing is leisurely and the atmosphere is dark. On the surface it's about a young man is under house-arrest so the movie gives you a sense of his boredom and isolation.

The script, however, is taut. There are only five characters. Actually more like four and half or four and an asterisk.

Without giving away any surprises, let me just say two commendable things about the story: the relationship between the protagonist and his obsession gets interesting; and fifteen minutes into most movies I can usually tell you how it's going to end, but this one surprised me. I thought for sure the mystery would have one particular solution. It didn't.

I really liked Stella Maeve's Abby character and Peter Stormare's Stokes character was just enigmatic enough to be interesting. The Mona Wilson character was, I assume, intentionally ambiguous and Keir Gilchrist played a plausibly sympathetic but not too sympathetic antihero.

The only character that really disappointed me was Kevin, played by Maestro Harrell. He played it well, but outside of one intelligent repartee with the protagonist, you almost wonder what he was there for other than to be the obligatory token black friend. Having accomplished so much and with such attention to detail, you'd think the scriptwriters and film makers would've tried a little harder to make this character more than just a cliché. But here again, you can't expect too much from a straight-to-streaming teen psycho horror movie.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. I think most viewers will be too, unless they're expecting to be blown away.

This movie was well made, entertaining, had a lot of twists and was really unexpected. Much, much better than the 4.3 it currently sits at. The acting was good, the story was good and production values are high. I hope to see more by the team that made this happen. The soundtrack and audio production is particularly strong. The visual effects are well made, especially because they don't seem to involve too much digital CGI. This movie was a nice break from the 'insidious'/'sinister'/'paranormal activity' style movies that have taken over the horror/thriller genre.

Because film crews often post extremely positive reviews (like this) on IMDb, I want to make it clear that I am not involved in the production of this movie in any way, nor is anyone I know.