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.

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.

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.

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.

I like slow movies, especially slow horror movies. The old school kind of horrors. Some of the newer ones have actually been quite good (It Follows for example), so I went for this open minded. Well, it really was slow. Even tho there are some intense moments, there are also a lot of slowly lingering scenes so I recommend not watching this when you are tired, I was close to dosing off a few times.

Soundtrack and the sound editing were good. FX were pretty good too. The slow style was somewhat good too, but the overall touch how everything was done didn't quite deliver. This movie lacks style that makes movies like It Follows exceptional. Cinematography was OK, and with more effort into color grading it might've been very good looking movie. Now it falls a bit short.

Acting was OK. Surprisingly Peter Stormare does the worst role here. He kind of has the part that is often played by has-been actors that have been dug up from 80s movies after making years of bad TV series. I don't think Stormare is quite there yet, but he truly sucks here. No one else really shines either, but are passable. Acting was a bit uneven, shuttling between pretentious, natural and "artistic".

Easily forgettable and can't really say I enjoyed it that much.