Dark Feed

"Did you see that!?" A film crew shooting a low budget horror movie moves into a abandoned psychiatric hospital. The hospital seems to take on a life of it's own the longer the crew stays. Little be little the cast and crew begin to notice strange things happening. I will admit that I had pretty low expectations for this even though I did like The Ward. I also realize the movie is about a low budget film crew but just because that's the plot doesn't mean they only have to hire bad actors. Not only is the fake movie low budget and bad acting, the actual movie is low budget and bad acting. It's hard to knock the movie based on budget but there comes a point where you have to realize that acting does matter, even in really low budget throw away movies like this. The rest of the movie was pretty much cookie cutter and not that scary to me. If you are a hardcore horror fan you may like this, I did not. Overall, the bad acting was too distracting for me to fully get into the movie. I say D+.

I am increasingly amazed that projects like "Dark Fall" and the people responsible for them somehow manage to get investors, and ultimately a distro house like Lionsgate to put it out.

This HAS to be a tax-write off scam, a "Spring Time For Hitler" scenario where the joke's on us, the viewers, and the IRS. No one viewing the rushes, or reading the script could not have missed the fact that this was SciFy Channel quality, low-rent drivel. Ergo, it had to be planned that way so investors could declare a loss on their income for 2012, thus taking the IRS bite and rendering it insignificant.

Everybody gets a REFUND!......a bunch of 20-somethings get a summer project, get stoned, drunk, have sex, all on the investors' dime, which will inevitably come right back to the investors' pockets. Also, how many times has that run-down hospital been used in films lately?

A screenwriter visits the set of his horror movie in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, where a dark force begins to create its own drama.

Ouch! I gave this a shot because of some good recent IMDb reviews and the writer/directors also wrote The Ward, a passable hospital horror. Problem starts with the screenplay, which trowels on 20 different characters who get lost in a series of choppy, ineffective scenes. Most of the dialogue is pointless, failing to give impetus to the dark force, and the threat is confusingly both internal and external as ghouls creep out of the shadows and the cast goes insane. Plus they chose a really lame protagonist. Total mess and very hard to sit through despite the short run time.

On top of that is the damn music. It's mostly simple, eerie strings and plinky piano - but it never turns off. Even when the odd dramatic scene comes along the dialogue gets swamped, and the music completely drains other scenes of their creepiness when silence is needed. Very close to hitting the eject button.

Hard to judge the actors, because their characters were so badly drawn - a bunch of squabbling 13 year olds - and their lines were so pointless and lacking in intelligence or information.

Camera was also poor. Lots of reflection on the lens and bad lighting of the actors.

The story did develop pace in the end, but overall just awful. A much better film in this genre is Grave Encounters.

Dark Feed is one of those films that looks cool, so you keep watching because something amazing is going to happen, you can feel it… So you keep watching and waiting… and waiting… Until the movie is over and you're like, "Damn, where did the past hour and a half go?" Dark feed had all the cool lighting, sweet sounds, awesome camera angles and shots of a horror movie, but with no movie. I really wanted to like it, but it really had no story and really weak dialog. It almost felt like a reality show a times, where you're just watching people on a film set work and talk about everyday life. The last 20 minutes of the film started to get interesting but I also felt like it didn't really matter because 70 minutes before that made my brain shutdown. A very bleak horror film overall, but it had major potential to be something amazing… Unfortunately it fell flat instead. I gave it a 4 instead of a 3 because the last 20 was pretty decent.

Please like me on Facebook! You can read more of my reviews and get info on the latest movies in horror: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Heart-Horror/338327476286206

A film crew shooting a horror flick in an old abandoned hospital, realise that all is not what it seems as one by one, they all seem to fall under the influence of an evil presence...

The problem I had with this film is that it's nothing that any self respecting horror fan hasn't seen before. It takes a while to get going and utilizes done before clichés such as ominous music combined with slow tracking shots, in an attempt at atmosphere. As a result it emerges as a pretty lacklustre by the numbers effort that despite having one or two nice ideas, is simply a ho-hum affair that has no real suspense or tension and the characters are pretty uninteresting. The performances aren't great either and overall the film simply comes across as boring. It was also far too restrained for my liking, considering its premise could have allowed for at least some potentially entertaining set piece kills, but it's all to tame and cutaway.

4/10, just a dreary, dull horror for me.