Dark Summer

I would have given a a higher rating if it hadn't been as slow as it was, but given that, it kept my attention and was worth waiting for. The acting was very good. Not the usual awkward moments you see in low budget films. No stupid cats jumping out of the closet, or music that ruins the moment by trying to make it seem even scarier. Some of the scenes caught me by surprise. Was it the best horror film I've ever seen? No, but I felt it was chilling and suspenseful. There was some gore, but not over the top so if a splatter-fest is your thing, this may not fill the bill. If you're more into psychological thrillers, this could do it for you. Be sure to watch through the credits to the end. All in all, a pretty entertaining horror film. Give it a watch!

I love horror/thriller movies. It isn't an exaggeration to say 90% of what I watch falls into that category. The other 10% is porn.

It takes very little to make me happy when it comes to these smaller independent type movies. It isn't even so much the movie that I enjoy watching. It's the fun of looking for those hidden gems. Sure, it can suck watching a movie that's terrible, but it's worth the risk because you might find that movie that's so good your sack shrivels up like a prune.

So even if the movie is terrible, I still enjoy it because it's all a part of the hunt.

Dark Summer, however, was garbage. Boring, no plot, bad acting. Just crap. I didn't even know the names of the characters. There was no explanation of what was going on or why. There was just a super-dooper scary ghost with a super-dooper scary hoodie. Ooooooooooo....

It was about an hour in when my pupils constricted and my body put me in a coma. When I finally woke up 4 days later I discovered that I had eaten the fingers off my left hand. There is also a large blood stain on the crotch of my pants but I'm to afraid to check what's causing it.

Realistic expectations are important. You can't expect a fine dining experience at a fast food place. You can't expect an overnight stay in a small town to be as stimulating as a week in Greece. And you can't expect a straight-to-streaming movie made by relative unknowns to crack your list of all-time favorite movies.

With the proper perspective, however, this movie isn't bad. In fact, I'd say it's better than most of the scores of straight-to-streaming movies I see each month.

The actors were watchable, the direction was excellent and the story was just a little more interesting than that of the average teen psycho horror tripe.

It's like Disturbia. Or perhaps I should say you might be led to believe it should be like Disturbia, but completely different. One way is how it starts out. If you'll recall, in Disturbia we got to see the accident that killed the protagonist's father and the incident that set him off. In Dark Summer we pick up a story that already seems to be in progress and we discover the back-story in pieces so that initially we won't have any sympathy or understanding for our protagonist. The emotional connection comes later.

The pacing is leisurely and the atmosphere is dark. On the surface it's about a young man is under house-arrest so the movie gives you a sense of his boredom and isolation.

The script, however, is taut. There are only five characters. Actually more like four and half or four and an asterisk.

Without giving away any surprises, let me just say two commendable things about the story: the relationship between the protagonist and his obsession gets interesting; and fifteen minutes into most movies I can usually tell you how it's going to end, but this one surprised me. I thought for sure the mystery would have one particular solution. It didn't.

I really liked Stella Maeve's Abby character and Peter Stormare's Stokes character was just enigmatic enough to be interesting. The Mona Wilson character was, I assume, intentionally ambiguous and Keir Gilchrist played a plausibly sympathetic but not too sympathetic antihero.

The only character that really disappointed me was Kevin, played by Maestro Harrell. He played it well, but outside of one intelligent repartee with the protagonist, you almost wonder what he was there for other than to be the obligatory token black friend. Having accomplished so much and with such attention to detail, you'd think the scriptwriters and film makers would've tried a little harder to make this character more than just a cliché. But here again, you can't expect too much from a straight-to-streaming teen psycho horror movie.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. I think most viewers will be too, unless they're expecting to be blown away.

I like slow movies, especially slow horror movies. The old school kind of horrors. Some of the newer ones have actually been quite good (It Follows for example), so I went for this open minded. Well, it really was slow. Even tho there are some intense moments, there are also a lot of slowly lingering scenes so I recommend not watching this when you are tired, I was close to dosing off a few times.

Soundtrack and the sound editing were good. FX were pretty good too. The slow style was somewhat good too, but the overall touch how everything was done didn't quite deliver. This movie lacks style that makes movies like It Follows exceptional. Cinematography was OK, and with more effort into color grading it might've been very good looking movie. Now it falls a bit short.

Acting was OK. Surprisingly Peter Stormare does the worst role here. He kind of has the part that is often played by has-been actors that have been dug up from 80s movies after making years of bad TV series. I don't think Stormare is quite there yet, but he truly sucks here. No one else really shines either, but are passable. Acting was a bit uneven, shuttling between pretentious, natural and "artistic".

Easily forgettable and can't really say I enjoyed it that much.

For the first 38 minutes all you get to enjoy is the camera following the character around the house as he senses something. It is like watching something in slow motion and you will understand what I mean when you watch the film.

The characters seem dull and there doesn't seem to be anything in the film to make you sit there and enjoy it. I couldn't even watch through to the ending and stopped it feeling annoyed at spending time watching this film.

I ended up returning to the film as I felt it wouldn't be fair to write a review watching only half of the film. Well, still boring and walked away feeling even more annoyed.

Really, you want a good ghost story, forget this one. Not worth the time.