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DVD review from Omega Channel - http://omegachannel.blogspot.com

Darkness-The Vampire Version
DVD REVIEW
Sifting through every horror film that comes out--or even a good chunk
of them--is like fishing a wedding ring out of a septic tank. You have
to swim through a lot of **** to find that little piece of gold. Leif
Jonker's Darkness is indeed that piece of gold, and considering the
number of crappy films I've seen lately, it's presence in my DVD player
is a truly wonderful thing.

The plot is sheer simplicity. A vampire named Liven is slaughtering
everyone who crosses his path in a small American town. His victims
rise from the dead with a powerful thirst of their own, and soon there
are vampires everywhere. A young man named Tobe has lost his family to
the vampire plague, and now his only desire is to destroy Liven. Tobe
soon joins forces with other survivors and they find themselves on a
path to one of the goriest climaxes in the history of horror cinema.

Darkness accomplishes the seemingly impossible by making vampires scary
again. These are not the aristocratic goth chic vamps of the Anne Rice
books or the action movie villains from the Blade movies. The undead of
Darkness are more like the pack-hunting animalistic vampires of Richard
Matheson's I Am Legend. There are no fangs or capes here, just the
walking dead with a raw, animalistic thirst. Jonker's vampires are not
above using weapons to bring down their prey, and while I'm sure a
stake could kill them, a bullet through the heart does the job just as
well.

This is a remarkable film for a number of reasons. Predating the
no-budget success of Kevin Smith's Clerks by a year, Darkness sprang
from a similarly impoverished budget in 1993. Darkness started life as
a film with a nineteen year old director who recruited friends as cast
and crew (The age range of the players, with one or two exceptions, is
limited to late teens to early twenties). Furthermore, the film was
never intended to be shown to the general public. It was created as a
feature length demo to show to potential investors, much like Sam
Raimi's Within the Woods was used to raise funds to produce The Evil
Dead. While Clerks went on to become a more or less mainstream success,
Darkness became something of an underground film.The fact that it is
now available in such a mainstream establishment as Best Buy is quite
astounding.

The acting ranges from fair to poor and the film never looks slick by
any stretch, but that's not the point. The raw look is one of the
film's greatest charms. The soft, grainy 8 millimeter image enhances
the dreamlike quality of the film, much the same way as black and white
photography does. You're not so much watching a movie as you are
experiencing a nightmare. The simple but effective synthesizer score
usually consists of a melancholy dirge that loops continually, not
unlike the kind of music you would hear in a horror-based computer
game.

Not all the gore effects work as well as they might--there's a chainsaw
to the hand gag that really shows Jonker's reach exceeding his
grasp--but the sheer volume and enthusiasm of the gore forgives a lot.
The Evil Dead influence is especially obvious when our heroes are
doused in the blood of the vampires they dispatch. The red stuff is
just everywhere in this movie, and it's done with style.

This two disk DVD set represents The Vampire Version of the film.
Jonker has finally been able to make the final cut that budgetary
limitations didn't permit back in the early nineties. The image has
been digitally remastered, and there are some great side by side
comparisons on the disk to show just how profound the difference is.
Jonker's original release version of the film, transferred to video
from film via a camcorder and a projector in his kitchen, is included
on the second disk. There are also several audio commentaries and
sundry extras to keep you busy for awhile.

A real triumph of talent, enthusiasm, and perseverance over budget, and
one of the best horror films I've seen in quite awhile.

More horror reviews and musings at Omega Channel
http://omegachannel.blogspot.com