An ambitious, very-low-budget entry in the vampire subgenre, DARKNESS has some scary moments but emphasizes over-the-top gore at the expense of story. It also suffers from, well, too much darkness.
After witnessing a bloody convenience-store massacre, Tobe (Gary Miller) makes it his quest to hunt down and destroy Liven (Randall Aviks), the vampire master responsible. He tracks the ghoul to Oakgrove, where a group of teenagers, having gone out of town for a rock concert, have returned late
at night to discover their loved ones, and everyone else in town, dead or vampirized. Steve (Christopher Owen Michael) is killed by a pack of ghouls in front of his girlfriend, Kelly (Cena Donham), who is then rescued by Tobe, Greg (Michael Gisick), and Dianne (Lisa Franz). Another attack leaves
Dianne dead, but the group is saved by the arrival of Glenn (Bill Hooper), who picks them up in his truck. They then set out to find Jodie (Steve Brown), the last of the surviving teens.
Jodie, meanwhile, has been confronted in an abandoned theater by Liven, who vampirizes him and sends him out to kill the others. Jodie and a pack of ghouls attack the group, kill Glenn and send Tobe, Kelly and Greg fleeing down a highway. As a huge pack of vampires pursues them and Greg succumbs
to a lethal bite, the sun breaks over the horizon, causing the creatures to melt and explode. Only Tobe and Kelly are left alive to re-arm themselves and continue the hunt for Liven.
Although DARKNESS comes billed as a vampire film, its clear model is the apocalyptic zombie formula spearheaded by George Romero, in which a small group of survivors battle armies of flesh-eating ghouls whose victims become creatures themselves. The gruesome approach is reminiscent of Romero as
well; every act of violence is presented with a maximum of torn flesh and spilling blood. But after the vivid and visceral opening in the convenience store, which sets the right shocking tone, filmmaker Leif Jonker's overemphasis on the gore becomes counterproductive, as scenes drag on long after
the bloodshed has stopped being scary. And at the climax, as one vampire after another melts down and explodes, the makeup effects (by star Miller) just aren't convincing enough to stand up to such lengthy scrutiny.
Ironically, some of Jonker's best work is in the gore-free scenes; he creates an eerie mood and an appropriately barren landscape for the pursuit of Liven. DARKNESS was shot on Super-8, and some of the footage has an evocative grittiness; too often, though, the scenes are poorly lit, and the
movie's title becomes frustratingly literal. And while the film creates some isolated jolts throughout, the script fairly quickly settles into a schematic death-and-pursuit formula that runs in place instead of offering diverting twists. The amateur cast goes through its paces acceptably, though
the characters aren't immune to the silly behavior common to such movies, as when Kelly stands screaming for five minutes while her boyfriend is killed instead of hightailing it to safety. (Graphic violence, profanity.) leave a comment