Dom zly

In 1978, in Poland, Edward Srodon (Arkadiusz Jakubik) loses his beloved wife that had a brain hemorrhage and becomes alcoholic. He decides to sell everything, leave the town and begin a new life in another place. His bus breaks on the road, and he walks in the rain until a farm to ask for shelter. Zdzislaw Dziabas (Marian Dziedziel) and his woman, Bozena Dziabasowa (Kinga Preis), welcome Srodon and he drinks with Dziabas, who shows where he manufactures his moonshine. Srodon proposes Dziabas to increase his production of the booze to sell to the soviets and they calculate how much they need to produce. Srodon shows his money and spends the night in the bed of Dziabas' son. During the night, he goes to the toilet and Dziabas and Bozena stab the son in the dark instead of Srodon in a night of murders. In 1982, the prosecutor and a team of police officers reconstitute the night to check what happened in that night.

"Dom zly" (2009), a.k.a "The Dark House", is a weird and bizarre low budget-movie. Indeed, it is one of the worst movies ever made. The screenplay in two periods, 1978 and 1982, does not work well. The locations are awful, with an ugly cast and dirty people that drink all the time. The police officers are alcoholic and most of them corrupt. The movie is totally overrated in IMDb, and I was lured by the title associated to the rating and reviews. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

Acting, directing, editing shine as a form of art in this beautiful movie. Actually the story is really simple. But, when telling of this story is combined with good acting and clever editing, brings a bright movie. Development of the plot is very clever, and teases your intelligence.

It's dark and heavy, especially on the second half, makes it difficult to watch, but,the movie sticks you to your seat. Political issues are brightly inserted through the story. Which i like the most is the movie is not irritating you with the concern of political messages. They are just smoothly spread over the plot.

And be prepared for a surprise ending. Just loved this movie!

The Dark House sees a man pack up and leave after the death of his wife. He stumbles across an old farm house where a father and daughter live. This is no simple narrative though. Running parallel to this is the same man taking police through the scene of a suggested crime. Is this man a witness? A suspect? A victim? The film gradually unfolds to reveal his story. This sounds engaging on its own but there is yet another layer. Political aspects may have some control over the police and how they want this case to turn out. The police aren't exactly in the moment, talking about their doctors, having snowball fights, blowing up condoms to hit each other with, or just enjoying the vodka. There's certainly a lot of satire that I probably missed, not being polish, but this is still a well plotted and beautifully shot thriller.

This is very grim, we see lives of poverty and desperation and brutality.

There acting is good, everyone delivers from Srodon as a likable coward to the bullying police officers.

The pace is quite slow, there is a lot of build up since both plot threads are worked out in parallel and we have to wait until both are ready before the pace can increase, this made it hard to watch in the beginning but it's worth persisting.

Both threads are dark and have a few twists.

There is a bit of humour, some drunken humour in the past thread and some more gallows humour in the current time thread.

The ending is very dark and surprising, and has a couple of extra twists.

This movie is telling a story that could happen anywhere - if anywhere is Poland or any other communist country. The way how the things happen will remind you that the human kind has its dark side that comes out way too easily! From my point of view it is one of the most interesting new polish movies, the plot is not obvious - or at least how it goes is not, it has integrity and all the right elements any movie should have. My only complaint would be that there are to many side stories included to the main story. Not all are relevant, and some quite hard to digest and understand.

If you like strong and heavy stuff - that makes you think about the condition of the human kind, you will find some in this movie.

I can recommend this title if you would like to see (or just remind yourself) how the things were done in communist Poland.