The Darkroom (2006)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Feature: C-

 

 

When we first saw Anchor Bay was issuing a title called The Darkroom, we thought it might be the 1980s Horror anthology ABC-TV made, but ABC has not licensed anything to Anchor Bay in years and it instead turned out to be a very predictable straight-to-DVD production about drugs, mental patients, visions and a serial killer than is phony all the way to its false ending.

 

Reed Diamond is the young man who lands up in a mental institute when found on a road with blood dripping down his arms.  Now grown up, he is given a new drug to help him, but it gives him visions (the kind that the producers of TV’s Millennium might consider having a cease & desist order over) about a killer on the loose who (surprise) kills young girls.  Unfortunately, director Mike Hurst and co-writer Mark A. Altman have a script so beyond formulaic and dead on arrival that it is at a grade school level with violence added by adults.  Lucy Lawless also shows up, sealing the ineptness of this mess.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was poorly shot in digital High Definition by Raymond Stella, appearing faded and detail poor constantly that has more to do with bad taping than the transfer.  Why this looks so bad is beyond us, but it is shockingly so.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is supposed to have Pro Logic surrounds, but it is not well presented and the combination is one of the worst new productions produced since IDT took over Anchor Bay.  Good thing Starz has picked things up, we hope.  Extras include pointless deleted scenes, a making of featurette, trailers for their Anchor Bay releases and commentary by Hurst and Altman.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo