Darkroom (2013)

Telling the story of a girl in a rehab centre who is offered a job that turns out to be her kidnapping and torture from religious zealots.Though the films production values are decent, the quality of the writing cannot be accused of the same.Messy generic plot that is as interesting as a 3 week old banana peel, instantly forgettable stuff.Elisabeth Rohm stars and I can't figure out for the life of me why, she is so above this tosh.With not a redeeming feature to its name Darkroom is not what I expected at all and sadly not something worth acknowledging again.The Good:Production values are decentElisabeth RohmThe Bad:Incredibly dullNo originalityPredictibleThings I Learnt From This Movie:With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion

This movie takes a long time to get going to the good stuff and as its only about 70 minutes long in total it could easily be made into a TV show.As for "the good stuff" it's nothing I haven't seen before in a lot of other horror movies. Religious nuts torturing girls private parts and forcing them to "repent".If you're a fan of torture porn I'd say go for it watch this movie. The thing that is most disturbing and not in a good way is it shows kids being tortured. I personally think kids shouldn't be in a movie of this caliber.

Michelle was in an accident. This damages all her attempts at drug rehabilitation. To get out of the program, she needs to get Rachel's approval. She's lost her school aid due to the court orders, and her job prospects are dim. Rachel gives her an assignment, which is at a huge, for-sale house doing modeling. Amazing. Why would anyone give so much help to this loser-with-repellent-attitude? She's not attractive, she has a bad smoker's rasp, and various wounds on her body. Model? Seriously?Rachel tries to get her to own up to her part in the driving accident in a group therapy session. This is more or less at the heart of the film. Michelle does not want to accept responsibility. She was driving, the three people with her were killed, but somehow it was not her fault.So many flashbacks, so many irritations. This story is short, and should be told linearly.At the photo shoot, she gets a costume for the gig, and directions to the first filming location. But no one is there.By this time, I'm rooting for Michelle to get a one-way ticket out of the movie. She adds little, but is repellent and irritating.At one point, her captors put some food under the door of her holding cell. Rather than eating for strength, the pouting idiot throws the food against the door. This harms her foes not one bit, but does mess up her already nasty cell. Hours later, a slight lesson is learned, and she cooperates a bit for food.Of course, cooperation does not do her any good in the end. Her captors are siblings whose obsessions make them play out the nightmares of their youth with their abusive mother. Michelle is only a side prop.Will she get out alive? Let's hope not. The thought of a sequel is scarier than the entire movie. ------Scores--------Cinematography: 8/10 Not too bad; some weak light and soft focus, though.Sound: 2/10 Had to listen to Michelle's terrible voice. Incidental music was not a plus during the movie itself.Acting: 1/10 I like Elisabeth Roehm, and was sorry to see her in this mess. Even so, this was not one of her better performances. Kaylee DeFer, on the other hand, was simply terrible. Christian Campbell was wretched. Tobias Segal was worthless.Screenplay: 1/10 Why do I have to listen to this ugly woman's ugly voice? A woman with neutral looks and a routine sort of voice (just about anyone) would have drawn more sympathy, which would have given the film more depth. But no, this harsh, useless, foul-mouthed, unrepentant, murdering scumbag is what everyone has to experience. So the conclusion I get from this dubious casting is that the director wanted the audience to hate the protagonist from the get-go, and greet whatever is done to her with glee. The back story of the siblings was convenient as well. So, let the slashing begin. The ending was incredibly weak.

It's hard to relay how effectively this film delivers absolutely nothing of value.I know...all you have to do is check out the posters and read the synopsis to know we're not shooting for a film brimming with deep, meaningful artistic content. But seriously? Darkroom starts up with a mildly interesting premise, even though it is duct-taped onto the very well-worn "lure the pretty girl into danger" trope. Kaylee Defer (in all fairness, delivering an OK performance given the material) plays Michelle, a girl who's doing time in a juvenile facility after killing three of her friends in a drunk driving accident. DeFer plays these opening scenes with a nice air of shell shock. At least there seems to be something inside herself that she's trying to effectively relay. She's lured to a sprawling mansion that's far too awesome to be in the company of these filmmakers --- it lends a very creepy, imposing atmosphere. One would think that the people residing in this house would be fairly interesting. They obviously would have some style, some flash, some character --- even if it were dark and twisted.Well, here's where Michaelbrent Collings script really drops the ball. The three antagonists, when not cribbing straight from the abused family-of-wackjobs movie handbook (bullying older male sib, domineering female sib, bullied and repressed younger male sib) come across as nothing more than common thugs who like to play with power tools. They're supposedly right-wing Christian extremists, but they act and talk like white trash hillbillies. Their methods are not scary, creepy, or menacing. They're just brutal and disgusting. And boring, unless a trip to Home Depot sends you into a full-tilt panic attack. Yes, I'm sure it's terrifying in real life to be attacked with a power drill or a hack saw. Not so much on the screen, especially when you could care less if any of these people survive.Darkroom is like an anti-Hostel. You can argue that both films depict the same thing, and rightfully so. What Eli Roth brought to the table in those films, though, were characters and situations that drew you into watching...and caring. Characters had quirks, eccentricities, and nuances that at least made them memorable...especially the villains. Darkroom has *none* of these things. It's bad guys are nothing but stiff, blank-slated cyphers. And not in a creep-out amoral Michael Myers way, either.So why does one write a film such as this? Had to be the cash, I guess. Which I must admit irritates me. It completely degrades the work of everyone on a project this size.Any possible reason beyond spilled CGI gore has been ripped off from thousands of other, better horror films (abusive families beget abuse, wow -- how deep). Inexplicably, the film ends with a home movie of the torturers as children, happy as all get-out, playing on the front lawn of the mansion. Not sure how the writer thought we would actually care about these cardboard cut-outs. The shot is as mystifying as why Phase 4 (a normally very discriminating distributor) would release this pile of gutless garbage.