Le règne des ténèbres

First i need to say that i took this movie out without watching it all.....but i would bet good money it didn't get any better! There are so many things wrong with this movie that i felt like taking notes just to keep track of them. I mean, what is going on here!? Why is he walking around in daylight? Did i miss something? Why are they injecting homeless people? Why is everybody talking like that and what is the deal with the guy with the southern accent? Maybe they wrap it all up at the end....like i said i took it out so who knows. Don't waste your money renting this. The acting would be laughable if it weren't actually painful to watch. I read somewhere that this movie had a million dollar budget, the largest percentage of which seemed to me to have been spent renting the bmws in the chase scene. They're convertibles, and our "hero" is driving one with the top down in broad daylight. That's where i turned it off!!

The only halfway decent thing about this movie is the cover art. It's easy to see why the principals have no other movie credits - they're just that bad. The only glimmer of on screen talent is from David No, with a real director and a real script he might hope to turn in a creditable performance.

Kel Dolen's lisping narration is a boring attempt to provide some sort of continuity and story line that would otherwise be totally absent from this lame excuse for a movie.

There is one shocker connected to this movie; according to the 'Official' website, they are making a sequel!

Don't let the cover fool you for this poor movie. the plot had many holes init so i was lost right off the bat. the acting was imporable. the main charactor looked like a batman and agent smith from The Matrix. on a scale of 1 to ten one "being poking my self in the eye with dull wooden spork" and ten being "I loved it." I'd give it a 2 glueing my hand to senitive areas and yanking my hand back. The last time I saw a movie this bad it was called i, zombie. I'd rather watch that again than this.

Pease dont rent this movie it was a waste of film

This movie is so completely awful it's difficult to know where to start! Firstly, 'El Mariachi' is namedropped on the DVD cover and we are led to believe this is a similar looooow budget effort. But in the commentary track the directors Kel Dolen and David Allen let slip it cost a million dollars! Now, by Hollywood standards that is low, but I wouldn't exactly call that a shoestring budget! 'Pi', 'Man Bites Dog' and 'Laws Of Gravity' are three movies that immediately spring to mind that show what can be done with very little money but TALENT and drive, and closer to home Peter Jackson's 'Bad Taste' was a cheap but original and entertaining horror movie that I really enjoyed. So there's no excuse for why 'Reign In Darkness' is so absolutely terrible! I can't think of anything good to say about this. The script stinks, there are no real characters with any substance or funny lines or any real logic behind it. The digital photography is passable I suppose but the acting stinks and the fake American accents are laughable. I couldn't help but wonder why Dolen and Allen made such an unoriginal and uninspired wanna-be mainstream movie in the first place. Why bother trying to compete with Hollywood product like 'Blade' when instead they could attempt something totally extreme and unlike anything Hollywood already produces? Someone like say, the astonishing Takashi Miike would be a more fruitful inspiration rather than this third-rate John Woo schtick. Surely being outside the mainstream allows you to be MORE creative and adventurous, not less! Maybe they were treating this is a show reel and are angling for a mainstream Hollywood career. If that's the case I wish them luck (because they're really gonna need it!), but otherwise I'm baffled about where they are coming from. Perhaps their constant references to Lucas and Spielberg on the DVD commentary says it all. I would say 'Reign In Darkness' is the worst Australian vampire movie of all time, but I've seen 'Bloodlust', and that, believe or not makes this look like 'The Matrix'! Even so this is one of the poorest Australia movies I've seen in many years, and is to be avoided like the plague!

Shot on video in Australia with a distinct lack of scope and talent, the biggest problem with REIGN IN DARKNESS is the script. Instead of coming up with something halfway original, it gives us a rip off of both BLADE and THE MATRIX, featuring vampires running around a city in dark clothing and taking part in gun battles and fights. The film is so slavishly derivative to everything that's come before I wonder why the filmmakers bothered – it's obvious they're not going to be able to emulate either of those Hollywood films on this kind of budget, so why even try? The annoying thing is that I'm sure they could have at least made a more watchable film had they gone for something different.

For anyone not familiar with shot-on-video epics, the problems are numerous: the acting is often wooden, the dialogue delivered in a way that would make your local amateur dramatics group cringe. This one features Australians putting on a variety of American accents. The direction is pedestrian and the fight scenes – well, they don't even register. Forget any semblance of characterisation, motivation or continuity. The special effects are negligent – not even any rubbishy CGI stuff to laugh at – and I get the impression that the filmmakers ran out of what little money they did have, as later on we get a few people chatting in a dark room for about ten minutes before the credits roll. Not the most exciting of endings, then.

At the end of the day, if you want to watch this sort of stuff you're going to go with the Hollywood films – and for good reason. I have no idea why REIGN IN DARKNESS has even received a DVD release over here, given that it has absolutely nothing going for it aside from a misleading cover that makes it look like a 'professional' flick.