The Dark Within

source: The Dark Within

Marcus (Paul Flannery) has mental issues and is on parole apparently for hurting his girlfriend Sara (Kendra Carelli). As a child, he displayed psychic abilities. His father experimented with people who had abilities and had produced a serum which was to enhance their psychic ability. Patient 142 was given the drug and a demon or something came out of his mouth. For therapy, he returns to his parents' cabin in order to restore his memory and regain his sanity. He discovers clues from his past and enters the next stop. The Twilight Zone. This was basically one man in a cabin film once it got going. The hallucinations, demons, time perception all worked for one confusing mess and ending. I liked the scares and film even though few people did. The film really wasn't that confusing, they explain what is going on. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity

Sorry didn't make it pass 20 minutes of it..normally give a film chance to warm up but lost interest quickly on this one

I did not end up liking this movie. It did get better in the second half but it was hard making it there. There is not a lot of new ground in this one. The acting is solid but it hinges on the main character and he goes for long stretches without saying anything. I like a lot of imagery, but this was hard to follow sometimes. The best part was the monster. It was cool looking and menacing. It just wasn't in the movie a lot and I don't even really know if it is more than a hallucination anyway. Still, I liked it. Watch this one if there isn't anything else or if you really like psychological thrills.

This movie really does its best to confuse the heck out of you. The director/writer rely heavily on flashbacks for exposition. On top of that time jumps and warped reality are standard parts of the messy plot. Instead of asking myself the question: "I wonder what will happen next?" I found myself wondering "What the hell is going on?" for the most part of the movie. Instead of building suspense and mystery the director/writer seem hellbent on confusing the s--- out of their audience. As well as boring them to death. It starts well enough with a scene in a military research facility where they're testing subjects for their psychic abilities. Something goes wrong and a bad looking black CGI smoke starts coming from one of the subject's mouth. It turns out that subject 142 and the lead scientist's son had made a psychic connection with an evil entity. We jump to the present and the son is all grown up and a mess. He doesn't remember anything about his childhood. Not even what happened to his parents. We know that something bad has happened to him recently because his shrink tells us. His girlfriend has left him because of that. The shrink suggest that he spends a couple of days in his parents cabin. He does and finds a vial containing some kind of a green liquid hidden under a rock. He decides to drink it on a whim and the fun begins. This is where conventional storytelling is abandoned and we're thrown on a roller coaster of visions, flashbacks, time warps, dreams, hallucinations...The antagonist finally shows up. Its an ordinary looking CGI monster. I have no idea what its motivation or purpose is. All I know is that it is linked with our protagonist Marcus ( Paul Flannery ) and the green liquid woke it again. It sometimes comes in a shape of a human just to screw with him. At this point in the movie we get a lot of scenes of our hero running around scared and confused. We also get a lot of tedious exposition via flashbacks, dreams and hallucinations. I wish I had counted how many times Marcus suddenly wakes up as if from a dream. The movie plods along with the pace of a snail. The screenplay finally stops torturing the hero and the audience and shows us what really happened to the parents. Marcus decides to get rid of the evil entity because its constantly playing tricks on him. And the movie ends to the relief of everyone. Final verdict: Not worth watching. It starts interestingly enough but soon becomes boring and tedious. This has a lot to do with the messy, convoluted and confusing plot. The movie relies too heavily on flashbacks and visions as storytelling devices instead of actually telling the story. There's a grand total of zero interesting characters in this movie. The monster isn't scary or interesting either. Its a badly designed CGI that has no clear purpose or motivation. It just appears from time to time and makes strange noises. The scenes with the monster should be a highlight of a movie like this but in this one they just felt oddly irrelevant.

Looks great, sounds great had me to the very end. Then I said, what exactly did I just see. Which actually is pretty good as I've been thinking about it all day just trying to figure it out.

The story mixes mysticism and science together for a supernatural horror show. There is a more than subtle nod to 80's cult horror, most notably 'Evil Dead'. Keith does offer a bit more creativity and originality in his approach. "The Dark Within", compared to other more recent retro horror homages, is slightly more experimental. Blending both the psuedo science of psychic ability manipulation and the more sinister exploration of the demonic essence, the film does establish a clear, interesting storyline. All that being said, "The Dark Within" does have some flaws. For one thing the platform of experimenting with psychic abilities isn't developed strong enough to sell the plot point, and the whole struggle to reconcile ones past while battling internal demons drags out a little too long. In the film's defense despite the sluggish start, "The Dark Within" does finally get there about 45 minutes into it. The horror elements are straight up, cool atmospheric tricks. The shock moments work, the CGI elements are quality displays that sell the whole demonic haunting aspects, and the creature design is awesome and creepy. The cinematography talents and shadowing really frame "The Dark Within" in a traditional 80's VHS horror style. And it all really kicks in around that 45 minute mark. I did find the choices for ending the film a bit cheap, but it creates an easy way of questioning the truth of the events we just saw.

The Dark Within