A Darker Reality (2008)

Having sat through such horror offerings as August Underground, A Serbian Film, all the Vomit Gore movies, the recent American Guinea Pig, Subconscious Cruelty, Melancholie Der Engel etc I guess you could say I'm at the pinnacle of ultimate horror experience. It doesn't really go above those movies unless you want to venture into real footage of humanities follies and Darker Reality just isn't up there with the big boys. That said, its surprisingly decent. The cop scenes are very pedestrian as a few others have said, but the victim and antagonist scenes are quite effective. The acting is easily an 8 on the 10 scale. I don't know what it is about those Baldwin brothers but all of them disgust me a little bit, their big fat faces and clunky look, so having one of them in here helped the plot for me, Daniel Baldwin is pretty good in this. A lot of the film actually doesn't show any physical body harm at all, most scenes are after the fact, or relayed via other means, but there are many shots of chained up women in a very distressed state and i really liked how they had the females adapt to their situation trying to stop each other screaming or doing anything that would bring the killer back into the room they were incarcerated in. As a whole, the film works pretty well, and I can see how for many here it was too much, but for those into the more extreme horror or those that enjoyed films like The Seasoning House, you'll probably love this. Grim, disturbing, and a little bit nasty. Ooh yeah! :-)

A cop is investigating crimes by a serial killer. A woman somehow escaped the killer's clutches and is in the hospital. There the cop runs into an attractive psychiatrist looking into the case. But as usual, he's got to be a jerk about working with someone else. She warns him that the girl is too traumatized and won't talk to some tough cop. And she's right. The girl opens up to her and we see the things the killer makes the girls he kidnaps go through. And it's pretty nasty stuff.We also learn about the killer. He's got a slow brother that helps out. He gives long speeches to the victims and all this came about by how he was treated by his mother. The focus now shifts entirely to the girls in the basement, and how they gather strength and are able to do something about their situation. But from the escaped girl, we learn something else. We learn that the killer has a next victim in mind.A Darker Reality surprised me. I wasn't expecting much. It has a 90s B movie look and feel to it. But it does have the courage to take psychological terror to a new level and it's pretty uncompromising about it.

Some movies are just down right disturbing. The imagery is so dark it sticks with you and not easily forgotten. This is one of those movies. Daniel Baldwin does a decent job playing the sadistic killer. The only reason I didn't give this movie higher marks was the acting by the cop and forensics lady, everyone else's acting was pretty good. It's odd to just have a couple of bad actors…either they are all good or all bad. Anyway, these two were bad enough to stick out.The story itself, a sick killer who kidnaps, tortures and kills woman isn't as clichéd as it sounds. The imagery and torture is very intimate, in some scenes it felt as if your right there in the same room. Not many movies can boast such a quality.If you got a strong stomach and can handle torture movies, I recommend this one!

A few years ago Chris Kazmier and Christopher Hutson put out a film called "Dark Reality." It was a very different type of film; mostly improvised, it dealt with several women who had been captured by a lunatic and imprisoned. It focused almost entirely on the women in captivity. Strong stuff that was difficult to watch -- the IMDb page now claims the cast and crew thought it was "a joke," but if you watch the film and see what the actresses put themselves through, it's no joke.Now a few years later, Kazmier is back with an expansion of the original film called "A Darker Reality." Caught it on VOD recently in advance of its DVD release. The film takes the original premise and expands it. It shows us the actual psycho (played by Daniel Baldwin -- no spoilers there, that's his entire character) and shows the police attempts to find and capture him and save the women.Let's get the problems out of the way first -- the police stuff is bad. Pretty much "Movie/TV Police 101" -- gruff detective gets a partner he doesn't want, etc. But much of the movie focuses on the trapped women and the narrative of an escaped survivor, and holy crap, it is harrowing. You really feel the utter helplessness of these women and it's legitimately disturbing. And somehow, having Daniel Baldwin as the psycho makes it even a little creepier. It's not perfect and there are things that stretch credibility even in this type of film (for example, the psycho manages to have an absurd amount of victims in one area) and while the ending is a punch in the gut, it's a little confusing. And as you can tell from this review, it is definitely not for everyone. But it is very well done, and I am definitely looking forward to purchasing this film when it comes out on DVD so hopefully get some "Behind the scenes" things.