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.

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.

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.

For the first 38 minutes all you get to enjoy is the camera following the character around the house as he senses something. It is like watching something in slow motion and you will understand what I mean when you watch the film.

The characters seem dull and there doesn't seem to be anything in the film to make you sit there and enjoy it. I couldn't even watch through to the ending and stopped it feeling annoyed at spending time watching this film.

I ended up returning to the film as I felt it wouldn't be fair to write a review watching only half of the film. Well, still boring and walked away feeling even more annoyed.

Really, you want a good ghost story, forget this one. Not worth the time.