Slipping Into Darkness

My review was written in February 1989 after watching the film on Virgin Vision video cassette.

A youth-themed film noir in the new genre initiated by "River's Edge", "Slipping into Darkness" is an interesting near-miss that ultimately becomes too cute for its own good.

Picture opened theatrically in limited fashion last November and is en route to video stores.

Michelle Johnson, Anastasia Fielding and Cristen Kauffman portray three spoiled, rich college girls in Nebraska who run afoul of hero John DiAquino when they kid around with his slow-witted brother (Neill Barry in a small but tellint role). Johnson (whose dad is the college's dean) accidentally hit the kid's dog with her Mercedes and when Barry is found dead at the railroad tracks, DiAquino sets out with the aid of his biker pals (Vyto Ruginis and David Sherrill) for revenge.

Filmmaker Eleanor Gaver bears down accurately on social class resentment and small-town provincialism well in pic's first half, but it trails off into kinky bondage motifs as the have-nots kidnap the heroines to punish them. Final reel is loaded with unconvincing revelations (flashbacks providing alternae information on the boy's death) and dubious plot twists ranging from incest to a surprising homicidal maniac.

Johnson is an effective anti-heroine and contrasting newcomers Fielding (extremely tall) and Kauffman also make distinctive impressions. Of the male protagonists, Vyto Ruginis' mannered performance is tough to take.

this movie is not as bad as the above rating might lead you to believe. it's not that good either, but is just an average ultra low budget thriller. one thing it does have going for it is the cinematography, which a much better then the standard, follow the characters around only, type stuff you usually see. however the director clearly had big ambitions, but was unable to hold the movie together, and as a result the entire film feels wrong somehow, like a piece is missing. anyway i wouldn't highly reccomend it, but at least it manages to be interesting.

To me, this movie looks like the type of flick that came out of an instance where someone saw "River's Edge" and loved it so much that it inspired them to try to make a similar movie. That said, this movie isn't as bad as it could be while it isn't as good as it should be. In it, three teen girls (two snobby, spoiled ones and one humane, shy one) end up getting the blame placed on them for the death of a mentally retarded guy. The police aren't about to do a whole lot, and the dead guy's brother is so distraught and angry that, without any true hard proof, he gets some ex-biker buddies together to go along with him to a museum during a school field trip, where they persuade the chicks to come with them to an old factory. There's a pretty aggressive interrogation, but nothing really happens at all. As they're about to let the girls go, they start splitting up and having one-on-one situations. One of those situations isn't so friendly, though, and the most warped biker out of the bunch ends up choking one of the girls to death in a graveyard. Then, everybody left goes on the run as the killer's sanity continues to unravel up until a surprisingly gory scene that I feel compelled to believe was ripped-off in that 2001 "Joy Ride" movie. Then you've got your betrayals and things to this nature as people turn on each other in order to either find out the truth about the retarded kid's death, or to keep it hidden. I found this movie mildly entertaining, but some parts (including the ending and the title song that they play throughout the film) were just damn irritating. This really is the kind of movie where the insane killer seems more human than everyone else (even more than that aforementioned nice, shy girl), and that doesn't seem altogether intentional here. Now, let me make it clear that I've seen movies much worse than this because, as I said, it's not terrible. At the same time, I find it the easiest to rate with stars the movies that are just of fair quality, no more, no less. I could easily rate this with three stars at the generous most.

Stupid Movie. You have Michelle Johnson and you don't unleash her fun bags. Would've made the movie watchable.

Although this movie is far from good, it's interesting in that it is one of those movies that seems to be made in a place far outside the usual Hollywood cinematic universe (in this case, Nebraska). The plot involves a former biker turned clean-cut college student who suspects that three private-school party girls may be responsible for the accidental death of his mentally retarded brother. He recruits two of his(rather resentful) former biker buddies and they trick and kidnap the three girls. Strangely, he seems to conclude the girls weren't actually at fault, but things get out of hand when the most deranged biker and the most sex-crazed girl pair off and go to an old cemetery...

The only recognizable "star" of this strange, obscure movie is Michelle Johnson who had earlier appeared in "Blame It on Rio" (Demi Moore's first movie) at the tender age of eighteen, and she spent so much time naked or in a bikini in that that no one seemed to notice that she wasn't really much of an actress. Her subsequent roles were all fully clothed ones, but her acting didn't really get any better. This is actually probably her best (acting) performance just because here she's at least at the same level as everyone else. The dialogue actually isn't too bad at all, but actions of the characters are often completely illogical. It's hard to believe even the most sex-mad party girl would willingly go off alone with a crazed biker who just kidnapped her and threatened her life, and the other two girls barely react to their friend's fate. The weak acting and the illogical actions by pretty much all the characters make it hard to really identify with anyone here.

Still, the GENERAL story is kind of different and interesting. And this movies makes great use of eerie Nebraska locations--a deserted factory, a rural graveyard, a foreclosed-upon farm in the middle of nowhere (complete with the body of a dead farmer!). Although it's obviously not in the same league (and it might be a rather dubious achievement) this movie manages to capture the spirit of rural Nebraska more than any other movie I've seen aside from "Boys Don't Cry". And if you're a fan of the War song "Slippin' into Darkness" this movie certainly makes liberal use of it. This is not really good, but it's also far from terrible