Dark Carnival

This movie threw me a curve, I bought it thinking that it would be somewhat in the likes of "Fun House" or "Hell Night" so I was prepared for a good horror movie but what I got was something totally different. After the first five minutes or so, I thought that this movie was made by Trauma or maybe a home video made for a group of friends that decided that they were bored and wanted to make a little extra cash. The whole cast took part in the production, directing, editing and all other credits in the film. I guess this movie was so bad that they couldn't even hire decent producers. This movie was not even scary at all and it was not even funny. They had an old man wearing a grocery bag over his head telling people's fortunes and a killer in a clown suit. All the sudden the actors turn possessed by the evil of the house that they all go mad and try to change what's fake into reality. They find out what's going on and they all try to leave. And the special effects in this film are lame. You can just picture a wire hanging from the limbs of these people as they dangle in the air like puppets. And it had one of the worst endings in any cheesy horror movie. Fans of Alan Ornsby might like this one but not me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, low-budget film-making, 1990s style! Despite advances in technology that make it easier and less expensive for aspiring filmmakers to ply their craft, this movie shows that there's no substitute for talent! A group of people stage a haunted house and become trapped in their own creation, all the while trying to elude a killer who is offing the amateur spookmeisters one by one. That's it in a nutshell, and trust me that that brief synopsis is probably more coherent than whatever script was concocted. The whole affair has the feel of an amateur student play, from the rotten non-acting to the interiors of the haunted house, which looks like a lot of paint-spattered canvas draped over a tunnel-like plywood framework. It makes you wonder if these people actually DID stage a haunted house, and came up with the idea of making a film around it as an afterthought, crafting their script after hours of viewing various segments of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and Friday THE 13TH series. Still, there's a great fly-by-your-pants sense of camaraderie, like a bunch of friends who love low-grade slasher flicks and all subscribe to FANGORIA got together with several kegs and some video equipment over a long weekend. Admirable for the effort, but definitely nothing to waste an afternoon over.

So a group of people that ran a haunted house in California decided to make a movie in said house.

The idea of a group of haunted house workers getting bumped off is a simple yet fun concept. Coming out just two years after the similar premise for Hauntedween, Dark Carnival could be considered the promised sequel that film never delivered.

If you have never heard of Hauntedween then stop reading, this movie is not for you.

For those of us who enjoy low budget regional horror films, Dark Carnival has plenty to offer, even if you do need to struggle to understand why things are happening most of the time.

In fact, there is a really interesting bit they do early on where once the killer shows up, all the actors seem to take on the persona of whatever killer or monster they are playing and begin doing things for real.

This is actually a pretty cool concept that I wish they would have followed up on more. Instead we get a bit of a confusing mess where a guy in a weird puffy clown costume bumps a few of the cast off before the movie shifts gears a third time to now the house itself is evil and feeds off the horror created(?)

It takes a lot of work to plan a successful haunted house. Unfortunately it seems like the same planning was not put into the film. Any one of the ideas they had would have made for a good film, but together they are a bit confusing. We learn absolutely nothing about any of the characters and thusly do not care for them. But damn, it's fun taking a time warp back to a haunted house in 1993 and seeing the whole thing, inner workings and all.

I had the distinct misfortune of renting 'Dark Carnival' recently. Now, being a lover of bad movies, I have a pretty high tolerance for B-horror movies. If a movie can make me laugh unintentionally, then it's a winner with me. Well, 'Dark Carnival' is neither a good movie, or a good bad movie.

First of all, the title is misleading. There's no carnival in this movie, despite the title and cover art. I'm assuming the title is Artisan's doing, as they probably needed to muster every creative juice to sucker people into renting this garbage. The basic premise is that a group of unappealing, pasty-white, late-twenties, early 30's aged people buy an old house, and set it up as a haunted house for Halloween. For no reasons given, a homeless man is added into the mix. I guess this is supposed to appeal to the homeless movie watching demographic. On Halloween night, the house turns everyone "evil" for a brief moment, and they take the horror of the house too far. Then, everyone disappears except for 4 or 5 main characters. They cannot escape the house, and the plot line blatantly ignores how their other co-workers managed to escape, about 10 minutes before. Oh, and then there's an evil building inspector running around trying to kill them off, to stop the evil of the house. I think his identity is supposed to be a surprise, but you'd have to be braindead not to figure it out. Then there's a lame finale, which I think is supposed to be epic, but it just looks like someone is standing off to the side with an electric fan while the actors crawl around on the floor.

Every aspect of this movie is just plain awful. The script is bad, with plot holes you could drive a bus through. These people must be all friends, or come from the same community college, because these are probably the least charismatic actors ever recorded. You cannot tell one person from another, so when one of them gets killed, you can't even tell who it is supposed to be. One woman's affectation is that she keeps on her sunglasses throughout the entire movie. Brilliant. And let me tell you, there's nothing quite so fun as sitting for a half-hour, watching people walk through the haunted house. I hope the extras walking through the house got paid good to act scared, because that is the best acting in the entire movie. The budget looks like it was comprised of pop bottle return money. The entire movie has a feel of a group of people that decided to make a movie because their softball beer league season was over. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Here we go again. Once more I sit back in amazement after watching a pretty interesting little ultra low budget independent made movie and wonder if the others commenting on it actually watched the same film I just enjoyed. A few years ago me and two cohorts went in together on a prospect to buy out the old videos from a rental shop that was converting to DVD. I kept all the horror movies and they kept everything that would sell. The result is that while I ended up a bit poorer there is an endless supply of old rental tapes cluttering my house, most of which I never would have thought of or pursued in the first place.

DARK CARNIVAL was one of them. Now the task is to slowly watch them in turn and keep whatever can be of use. This is what I would refer to as a "keeper", odd and engaging enough to warrant a 2nd viewing at some later date, though certainly not anything I will seek out on DVD or bother recommending to anyone. BUT, I liked it's sense of arty, urban grunge. A group of talented young slackers get together every year to make a haunted house, and on the advice of a homeless former mental asylum counselor choose a house for their efforts that has some sort of demonic presence waiting for just such an occasion to possess those who are stupid enough to undertake such a task. The idea is that deaths will occur and the souls of the dead will "stay behind" to forever live in the moment of horror that was depicted in the scene.

A former survivor of another haunted house that came to life decides to stop the madness once and for all, invading the structure after closing one night and stalking those locked inside. That's all I'll reveal as far as plot specifics, though I can confirm in advance that this is NOT a funhouse slasher. It is more like MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE except instead of trucks or bulldozers coming to life we get spinning saw blades, flying knives, self-operating guillotines and lots of slippery gelatin on the floors. It's all very low budget, staged as cheaply as possible and filmed in a sort of static manner that is devoid of any overt artiness beyond documenting the sets, costumes and situational lighting used.

There are some interesting scenes however, and a kind of devil may care attitude about the staging of the film. These people knew they were probably making the only movie they would ever have a chance to participate in, and like another commenter one suspects that perhaps they actually had made a haunted house and one night while striking the set and draining a keg of beer someone struck up a conversation on making a movie around the idea of a haunted house. Since the sets would already be built all one had to do would be to synthesize a plot that would require the actors to be confined to the haunted house sets.

The idea of having a killer stalking the haunted house staff is probably a natural and the people who wrote & produced the film should be commended for not settling on such a perfunctory idea. Instead the individual horror environments of the various rooms "come to life", with admittedly mixed but still interesting results. The only time the film missteps is when one of the survivors suggests "burying" the dead body of one of the victims in the haunted house's graveyard scene room, which serves as a plot device ... and would be tampering with evidence at a crime scene. Hint for those of you who come across any dead bodies of your friends: LEAVE THEM BE and call the cops, or you may find yourself in trouble for being an accessory after the fact.

So yes the ending is kind of lame, and yes there is little or no gore, and yes there is no nudity or sex. But I did like how the cast reminded me of some of the jokers I went to art school with, particularly the hot thuggy sculpture babe who makes a torture chamber out of spinning saw blades. She had nice tight jeans and a tank top that was made for putting one's hand up inside of. And there was one laugh out loud moment when a character described having to sacrifice his hand to escape danger. And the thrown together urban junk art aesthetic is actually rather pleasing.

At some point during the next decade or so the fashionable arty urban grunge aesthetic will become a nostalgia fixation and here might be one of the perfect films to re-live the mid 1990s by. It may not be a particularly good movie but it was made, like it or not, and that's what the Clinton years were all about. You cannot fault the movie for telling things like they were.

5/10