A Darker Reality

A few years ago Chris Kazmier and Christopher Hutson put out a film called "Dark Reality." It was a very different type of film; mostly improvised, it dealt with several women who had been captured by a lunatic and imprisoned. It focused almost entirely on the women in captivity. Strong stuff that was difficult to watch -- the IMDb page now claims the cast and crew thought it was "a joke," but if you watch the film and see what the actresses put themselves through, it's no joke.

Now a few years later, Kazmier is back with an expansion of the original film called "A Darker Reality." Caught it on VOD recently in advance of its DVD release. The film takes the original premise and expands it. It shows us the actual psycho (played by Daniel Baldwin -- no spoilers there, that's his entire character) and shows the police attempts to find and capture him and save the women.

Let's get the problems out of the way first -- the police stuff is bad. Pretty much "Movie/TV Police 101" -- gruff detective gets a partner he doesn't want, etc. But much of the movie focuses on the trapped women and the narrative of an escaped survivor, and holy crap, it is harrowing. You really feel the utter helplessness of these women and it's legitimately disturbing. And somehow, having Daniel Baldwin as the psycho makes it even a little creepier.

It's not perfect and there are things that stretch credibility even in this type of film (for example, the psycho manages to have an absurd amount of victims in one area) and while the ending is a punch in the gut, it's a little confusing. And as you can tell from this review, it is definitely not for everyone. But it is very well done, and I am definitely looking forward to purchasing this film when it comes out on DVD so hopefully get some "Behind the scenes" things.

Having sat through such horror offerings as August Underground, A Serbian Film, all the Vomit Gore movies, the recent American Guinea Pig, Subconscious Cruelty, Melancholie Der Engel etc I guess you could say I'm at the pinnacle of ultimate horror experience. It doesn't really go above those movies unless you want to venture into real footage of humanities follies and Darker Reality just isn't up there with the big boys. That said, its surprisingly decent. The cop scenes are very pedestrian as a few others have said, but the victim and antagonist scenes are quite effective. The acting is easily an 8 on the 10 scale. I don't know what it is about those Baldwin brothers but all of them disgust me a little bit, their big fat faces and clunky look, so having one of them in here helped the plot for me, Daniel Baldwin is pretty good in this. A lot of the film actually doesn't show any physical body harm at all, most scenes are after the fact, or relayed via other means, but there are many shots of chained up women in a very distressed state and i really liked how they had the females adapt to their situation trying to stop each other screaming or doing anything that would bring the killer back into the room they were incarcerated in. As a whole, the film works pretty well, and I can see how for many here it was too much, but for those into the more extreme horror or those that enjoyed films like The Seasoning House, you'll probably love this. Grim, disturbing, and a little bit nasty. Ooh yeah! :-)

Usually I have a strong stomach for gore and guts... but this movie is just disturbing. I hope to God there is no one alive that would actually be that depraved. THe acting of the girls was very convincing , you felt their pain, the acting of everyone else was boring and uninteresting. I wonder why well known actors would take on this kind of movie. If the point of the movie was to make the make you want to vomit over the reality that this could actually happen, then it rates a 10. I couldn't watch the whole thing. I felt depraved even watching as much as I did, if I would have watched the entire movie I would feel like I was OK with what was happening... guess you'll have to watch it and decide for yourself.

This is the story of a serial killer and torturer of women known as The Ghost. There is a cop dedicated to finding him and saving the women he has in his torture dungeon before he can kill them. There is also a shrink that is trying to get information from one woman that survived and escaped him. This movie could have been so much better. I do not know if it was the writing, directing or editing that failed here, but someone failed. There were some tense moments and I must say that I was happy with how it ended. I saw a few reviews where the author was not happy, because without giving away too much, this film does not have the traditional happy ending.

One thing that always gets me in movies like this is the attention to some details, while completely blowing it with others. My case in this film was one of the girls had been held captive for a while, how long is never said. They made her teeth look like they had not seen a decent brushing in a while. Good detail. The girls were filthy, clearly had not been given the opportunity to shower for their entire time there, yet all were clean shaven. I know it goes against modern views on how women should look, but filmmakers really need to start paying attention to such details. Women that are stranded or held captive do not have perfect hair and make-up (anything from Gilligan's Island to Lost) and they certainly do not groom themselves, like in this film.

Oh, and try not to pay attention to the microphone packs that several of the actors wear in this, how they missed that is beyond me.

A cop is investigating crimes by a serial killer. A woman somehow escaped the killer's clutches and is in the hospital. There the cop runs into an attractive psychiatrist looking into the case. But as usual, he's got to be a jerk about working with someone else. She warns him that the girl is too traumatized and won't talk to some tough cop. And she's right. The girl opens up to her and we see the things the killer makes the girls he kidnaps go through. And it's pretty nasty stuff.

We also learn about the killer. He's got a slow brother that helps out. He gives long speeches to the victims and all this came about by how he was treated by his mother. The focus now shifts entirely to the girls in the basement, and how they gather strength and are able to do something about their situation. But from the escaped girl, we learn something else. We learn that the killer has a next victim in mind.

A Darker Reality surprised me. I wasn't expecting much. It has a 90s B movie look and feel to it. But it does have the courage to take psychological terror to a new level and it's pretty uncompromising about it.