Le règne des ténèbres

OK, first things first, let me get a little rant out of the way: IF YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE AN EX-SPECIAL FORCES BOUNTY HUNTER IN YOUR MOVIE MAKE SURE HE OR SHE CAN ACTUALLY SPEAK IN THE DIALECT YOU WANT THEM TO! The Aussie trying to talk like an Alabama native was, quite possibly, the dumbest idea in cinema history. Except for casting Judge Reinhold as a Black Ops officer in "Project: Human Weapon".

The cinematography wasn't all that bad (except the part where I could actually see the rig they used to lift people off the ground) and it showed what the future of Independent Film will look like (sharp, clear, and almost as good as the studios) but the people behind the camera must've blown their camera budget on that awful looking Kevlar vest thing because instead of buying a red lens filter to simulate night time they just turned the contrast on the camera WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY down. Awful. So, yeah, it looked OK despite having a couple of glaring mistakes but that simply wasn't enough to save a horribly written, shoddily directed, badly acted piece of Australian crap.

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

I know that cosmic forces conspire against me and this movie is further proof of that fact. You see, were it not so, then this blight of a film, this cancer, this celluloid diarrhea that crept into my eyes and ears and then sat and festered upon my brain, forever burned into my memory, would never have happened.

Now, surely you must think "Fortey, what could be so bad? Why was the movie horrible? Didn't the end clinch it at least?"

Well, allow me to give you a guided tour of the special sphere of Hades that was this film.

To begin, this movie was filmed with a Sony Handycam. Possibly something older than a handycam made by Hitachi, from the mid 80's, I can't be sure. Some viewers appreciated the gritty look it provided. I was distracted by the "Uncle Carl's home movies" look it provided.

Describing the actors as wooden would insult furniture everywhere. Describing the dialogue as horrendous would be accurate and perhaps a little soft. But hey, I'm a tolerant guy. I like Ed Wood movies sometimes, it's hard to make my brain hurt with poor dialogue. But not impossible.

The producers of this film apparently saw the Matrix and a handful of vampire films (though I believe this shlock actually predates Underworld) and thought to themselves "Hey guys...let's take these ideas and then throw them in a blender with feces, slap it in front of a camera and see what happens." And so they did.

The ending though...ahh, the ending. What can I say about that except... I never saw it. I thought a sandwich would be more fulfilling than watching the rest of this film so I turned it off never to watch it again. And I forgot to make my sandwich. C'est la vie.

For those who liked this movie, I recommend Beaches featuring a young Mayim Bialik as well as tasty lead paint chips. It's the treat that can't be beat.

I collect vampire movies....All of them. The good, the bad, the ugly of them. Everything from Underworld to the original Dracula featuring the one and only Bela...So when I found this in a bin for only $5.50, I thought SWEET!!! A new vampire movie for about the same price as a rental.

Now.....all I can say is that I want my $5.50 back with INTEREST. I would have given the movie a ZERO instead of a one, but there wasn't that option. Don't waste your time or your money...Even if you have the flu and can't get out of the house and it is the only thing you can find on some obscure cable program....Don't do it. You'll CRY when you watch it because you can actually feel your brain cells dying and shriveling up.

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.