In the Dark

Therefore, I can honestly say, this was TERRIBLE. Firstly, every other positive comment HAS to be made by the people involved with the production. 8.5 rating? Really? Secondly, I love "fake-umentaries", but this was just bad. The acting was terrible... below B-grade. The "great camera work" was... well, up there with the acting. I know they weren't going for "slick", but it was just bad. The production value was actually quite good, which just adds to the disappointing end result. I can never tire of the "faux-cumentary" genre, but it's only been done right a few times. I'll give the filmmakers the credit of coming up with a cool concept, actually getting it off the ground and distributed, but they failed at making anything remotely watchable. Better luck next time.

You would think it would be easy to make a move set in an insane asylum scary, but for some reason movie makers have had trouble with this. Dark Asylum was horrible, Session 9 was pretty good, and this movie is somewhere in the middle.

This movie borrows very heavily from Blair Witch, but that doesn't automatically make it bad. It's a legitimate way to make a scary movie on a low budget, and budgets don't get much lower than this.

I don't have a problem with the acting; the problem is most of the characters are very generic, and some of the writing is awful ("You're not my friend anymore!"). Also this movie is set in the 80's for some inexplicable reason which makes it all the more cheesy.

Just forget about the plot... it doesn't make any sense, the "twist" ending is rendered completely ineffective by the inability of the writers to make us give a crap about what's going on.

The main thing that this movie does well is provide some creepy shots. Again, they use the Blair Witch idea of home movie cameras and throws in security camera footage to pretty good effect.

This would be a decent student movie, but if you're expecting the competence that normally comes with "real" movie you will be disappointed.

So why am I give it four stars?

Because there is a scene towards the end with a rotating security camera that is absolutely brilliant. There's no dialogue, and because the camera keeps turning away from the action, you can't see everything that happens. But what you can see is enough. I would watch a whole movie like that.

The plot is original and the camera shots are amazing. I'm still not sure if it is all real footage like the director says it is in the beginning of the film. If this is actual footage then it is pretty amazing stuff. I heard that at least some of the film is the actual footage from the real events. Either way, it is awesome. Each scene is dream-like and disturbing at the same time. The way the film is edited is wild. My favorite scenes in the film are the scenes in the crazy house and the silent scenes with the surveillance cameras! CREEPY! Plus, the rock-n-roll music rocks. This is one of my favorite horror films now. It will be a cult classic, no doubt. Trippy film! Loved it.

In The Dark was definitely a unique and good movie. It had shocking and scary moments, for sure, but most of all I was captured by how the filming actually happened and by the actual story itself. Some scenes were down right gnarly and I give it major kudos for the liberal editing of it. I feet it was a cross between a better Blair Witch and a scarier Halloween, with the addition of using actual footage and real people to tell a real and creepy story. Some of the people in it were foul, which I loved because I could relate! It was a real good look at real life fright and mayhem. Also, there are intense, silent moments in the film that haven't ever been done before in modern day movies. This one will end up with a cult following I'm sure.