Cold & Dark (2005)

Moody, strange and very dark. Mort Shade(Kevin Howarth)and John Dark(Luke Goss)are a pair of police detectives working with the vice squad in a notoriously rough neighborhood near the docks. When Mort is killed in an altercation in a refrigerated warehouse, Detective Dark leaves the scene to get help...only to return and find his partner alive and well. Soon some of the hardest to touch criminals Shade and Dark have been tracking turn up deader than dead. Dark discovers that his parter has been possessed by a bloodthirsty evil entity that is responsible for the savage killings. Other cast members: Carly Turnbull, Carrie Clarke, Matt Lucas and Jake Curran.

Two violent English cops fight crime until one of them is infected with some supernatural parasite that makes him crave the taste of human flesh. The violence continues, but in a slightly different way.The first thing that struck me about this film is the use of a blue lens, which seems to be a new fad in horror movies. "Saw III" used a similar tint, and I know I've seen it a few other places, as well. While I like the mood the tint brings out, this technique is becoming too obvious for me and I hope the fad goes away in a year or two because it's just going to get old.Horror fans who like gore will like this movie, or at least like the gore in this movie, because there's plenty of it. In one scene, a man is waiting at a glory hole to get a little sausage. Moments later, plenty of fluid comes through the hole, but not what he was expecting. Minutes later, another man is shoved through a wall right in front of a hysteric small child, his face mangled to all hell. The violence continues like this for most of the film.By the way, I also enjoyed the glory hole scene for its use of a Rubik's cube, which I haven't seen used effectively in a movie since the 1985 Chuck Norris flop, "Code of Silence". (Yes, I found a way to reference Chuck Norris in a horror film review.)I was a bit distracted by the English accents, which are fairly thick and the volume is not loud enough to help you make the words distinct. This is sort of like "Trainspotting", but I found this even less easy to adjust to. I almost would have welcomed some Americans dubbing voices over the top of the film, despite my dislike of dubbing.The director (Andrew Goth?) knows how to film a scene and get right where he needs to be. Early on during a rooftop scene, he implements some dynamite overhead directing, as if from a helicopter or from Superman's point of view. It was very nice, and much more than you usually get from people you've never heard of. Another reviewer said that Goth, "displays a strong visual style and a good eye for interesting camera angles," which I think is a great way to say it.The movie sadly suffered from a convoluted plot, where I asked myself "who are these characters?" a few times. Earlier people are already forgotten by the middle of the film, and you aren't really sure what the underlying plot actually is. If the first half is drug dealers who don't show up in the second half, and the second half is about a parasite that never shows up until 43 minutes into the film, where is the consistent story? Also, another reviewer called the movie "well-made but intensely boring" and I would not necessarily disagree. While I was not bored, the lack of connection to the movie made it more difficult to get into what should have been a breathtakingly beautiful work of art.I also never even figured out who the two main characters were, which I think is a huge drawback. I know the cops are named Dark and Shade, rather than Dark and Cold as you would expect, but I did not know which was which throughout most of the first half. I am pretty sure no background on them was offered and we had no reason to give a fig about either one of them.I would recommend this film to others, mostly because I would like to hear more opinions on it. I think with some minor tweaking this would have been a great movie, and I hate to dismiss it out of hand on a whim. I would give it a second viewing just to be more sure of my thoughts on the movie. It is not bad, but I'm not sure if I can say it's great. Until further examination, I leave this film with a slightly-above-average grade.

Hip little flick with some ballsy ambition. The director is a guy to watch. The plot was a little twisted, but watch it twice and it gets better. Matt Lucas as Dr. Elgin was a brilliant piece of casting. Kevin Howarth I'd already seen in Last Horror Picture, but in Cold & dark he really gets to flex his acting chops. His performance is mesmerising. Luke Goss plays a good number, very mean and moody. Kinda like Jason Statham. I liked the way Andrew Goth goes for the cinematic shot. This guy shoots for the big screen and it works. But you can feel the tension against the low budget cutting in. There was just not enough time to flesh the good stuff out. Great gore FX in some scenes. The cottage blood bath worked a treat! The team behind this film have got something. I'll track 'em. A Gothic Western next? Cool.

"Cold and Dark" is a brand new and well-intended British horror/action flick with that may count on ambitious cast & crew members, a dozen of semi-good ideas and a couple of impressive special effects. Unfortunately the script and elaboration are far too messy to make it become a memorable film and I simply can't recommend it wholeheartedly, even though I really wanted to. The story revolves on two macho buddy cops (luckily they wear their badges around the neck, because they looked more like dock workers to me) who put a lot of time and effort in unraveling a network of human smuggling. The brains behind these illegal atrocities naturally are well protected and thus every action taken by our heroic cops turns out pointless. Until one day, officer Shade survives a mysterious incident in a freezer (I still haven't figured out what exactly happened there) and all of a sudden he enjoys monstrous powers. From then on, the two no longer await a boring trial and they make sure every villain's live quickly comes to a bloody end. You can tell that the "vigilante cop" premise isn't exactly original and the monstrous touch is, in fact, the only more or less inventive aspect. And then still this movie fails to impress because of its many boring sequences and the completely illogical structure featuring at times. The rough camera-work and voice-over are a little too obviously stolen from other "cool" films like "Snatch" or "The Boondock Saints", while the top-notch sound effects often miss their effect. And yet, there are several positive elements to detect in this production! A few sequences are downright dazzling (like the first massacre, set in a filthy restroom) and there are some delightfully absurd characters introduced. Like Dr. Elgin who seems to have escaped the Men in Black cast or the typically Scottish commissioner who yells really loud whenever he speaks and compares his police squad with a set of golf clubs. The black humor certainly is the biggest trump of this film. I would label this "Cold and Dark" a missed opportunity but I reckon Andrew Goth has the potential to grow as a director. This is only his second film after "Everybody Loves Sunshine", starring David Bowie.