Dark Cloud

The movie is a slow one. It's not an action adventure shoot 'em up blood, guts and gore film. Not much happens over a long period of time. Eventually there is an ending. It's an ending which you would almost expect to happen as we've seen this sort of film done many times. There never seems to be a movie where tech goes right and everyone benefits. It's always the situation that tech goes wrong and people become enslaved. The first Matrix movie was good that way. It had a breaking free of the enslavement. Then they made the two sequels which crushed that freedom which was just lame. I'm sure they never expected it to have the success the first movie did. When it was successful they cashed in. The only way to do that was to have a Matrix 2.0 or was it 10.0 by that time. Who knows or cares. But it too managed to have humanity enslaved by the tech. Now you look around at the world now, and it's no longer old Nokia phones it's faces permanently buried into little black rectangles with fingers pecking like chickens at a feeder. The enslavement is here already right? Don't you think so? It's a sad state of affairs and one which this movie of course just ends up being that way.

Dark Cloud doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel but it uses it and my wife and I were entertained . The run time felt shorter like an episodic but it still paced good and maybe that isn't a bad thing. Do not watch it expecting it to be what we can see on the Poster cuz it isn't ghost in the shell or Matrix. I am glad I didn't see the poster first because I didn't know what to expect. It's definitely an independent feature and small but it knows it and does not make efforts to go big which works in its favor. . Ive seen a couple of the actors in other independent science fiction movies in festivals. The two guy characters are really weird and the lead actor is likable and I like it. The dialog isnt afraid to have a little bit of fun which assists in balancing out the grim vibes and that works. Its direction style fits right in with the Crohnenbergs, Fincher with splashes of Dario Argento literally there are splashes of argento colours and the score is really cool. It's a low key watch until the end and It is an ambitious independent movie. Not bad.

For the love of God, will somebody please put an end to the horrific lighting that these people are doing today!? First it was the ridiculously nauseating "found footage" gimmick with everything filmed by what looked like cellphones, and now we have scenes "lit" (or rather not lit) in a style that would have gotten you kicked out of film school and banned for life from even owning a camera ten years ago! Every single scene is filmed in almost complete an utter darkness. Even when there is a light on in the room (which is rare), it might as well be a 4 watt nightlight bulb for all of the light it emits. Then, you have SO many scenes where the actors are backlit with absolutely NO fill light whatsoever, so all you see is a washed out background and shadows where people should be.

If it weren't for that mess, I might be tempted to give this a five or even a six star rating. Yes... the lack of / poor lighting was THAT distracting.

The story itself is nothing new. A girl gets placed in a test house where an AI (artificial intelligence) is supposed to look after her. But (and I am sure this is not a spoiler) the AI goes rogue. It's been done to death. I mean, the story is a little lacking, but it's an ok way to kill a night when there's nothing better to do. Just don't expect mind blowing entertainment and you'll be ok.

This could have been a solid AI machine against human thriller except that it is there doesn't appear to be any cohesion between script, actor, director or editor.

In the end it plays out pretty much as you would expect.

Right, well the 2022 sci-fi horror movie "Dark Cloud" definitely had a nice poster/cover, and the synopsis sounded interesting enough. Sure, I hadn't even heard about "Dark Cloud" from writer J. J. Kaiser and director Jay Ness before I sat down to watch it.

And talk about a snoozefest. Wow, this movie was just insanely slow paced and uneventful. I even drifted off to sleep once as the movie trotted on in a very monotonous pace with virtually nothing happening as the narrative slowly died.

I will say that "Dark Cloud" seemed to have potential, but writer J. J. Kaiser and director Jay Ness botched it here and delivered a stinking heap of a movie. Trust me, you don't want to waste your time, money or effort on this movie. I was bored to tears suffering through this movie.

The movie has a relatively small cast ensemble, and the actresses and actors are struggling with having virtually nothing to work with in terms of a proper script and storyline, interesting characters or riveting dialogue. Now, I wasn't familiar with any of the performers here, but I bet they were doing their best with having nothing to work with.

My rating of "Dark Cloud" lands on a generous two out of ten stars, based solely on the production value of the movie.