Dark Corners (2006)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Film: C

 

 

A murderer is on the loose in the suburbs and Thora Birch may be the next victim, but are the demons real or something even more sinister?  Writer/director Ray Gower’s Dark Corners is the latest attempt to do a Horror film that tries to be profound, but lands up being superfluous, unrealistic, unsuspenseful and truly pointless.  All this despite an interesting female lead.

 

The first big mistake is the beyond obvious point that you can tell is a man trying to write for a woman.  You get such a young male point of view that you never believe it is a three-dimensional female character in trouble, no matter how good Birch is.  Also, the editing, camerawork (by Paul Sadourian) and production design is awkward and never coheres into a viewing space where you can even become interested, let alone put in suspense.  All in all, it is a bad genre work thinking it is something more, but turning out to be much less.  At least it was a little ambitious.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image looks like it was shot in digital High Definition and it is not a good thing.  Colors bleed beyond stylizing and detail and depth are so poor as to be annoying.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix just spreads out the limited fidelity of the not-so-hot production sound.  The only extra is a Gower/Birch commentary track that shows they were trying to do something interesting and failed through sheer inexperience, especially his.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo