Left In Darkness (2006/Horror)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extra: C Feature: C-
Is
Hollywood and connected entities ruining their product by rushing things too
much? That has become an increasingly
voiced question as more and more product turns out lopsided, dumb, awful or
failed for common sense reasons it does not have to. This includes the simplest genre works and
Steven R. Monroe’s Left In Darkness
(2006) is the latest such example from Stephen J. Cannell and IDT, owners of
Anchor Bay Entertainment.
It is
even issued under that DVD label, yet the production does not bare that name
synonymous with Horror and that should tell us something is wrong here. Monica Keene from Freddy vs. Jason is young 21-year-old Monica, a young lady whose
mother died at childbirth. Monica has
this complex that the death is her fault and befalls a worse fate that including
rape and murder, though she is not dead.
Instead, she is in another world between heaven/hell or life/death or
something like that. I say “something”
because all kinds of things are started here that are not finished.
Besides
trivializing (intended or not) rape and murder, throwing in the tired old
guardian angel who might be devil or angel (we should ask singer Melanie if she
can figure it out) and you have a final product with no distinction that at any
time could have picked up and at least been watchable if the Philip Daly/Jane
Whitney script had not been so flat. The
title therefore refers to where the viewer will be after watching this nonsense.
The 1.85
X 1 image is not bad, but lacks clarity and detail that has nothing to do with
the genre. Cinematographer Matt
Heckerling cannot seem to come up with enough of a way to distinguish the
difference between the real world and other world visually, so he can forget
that A.S.C. membership for a while. The
Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is a little better than the 2.0 Pro Logic mix, but that
is it. Extras include a wacky featurette
where (as a tie-in to the story) many involved in production are asked about
their 21st birthday, the poor trailer, a making of featurette and
lame audio commentary that makes the film only seem worse. Our case was dubbed a “special
glow-in-the-dark edition” because the paperboard slipcase had parts of it that
did glow in the dark. Too bad that was
more visually entertaining than any shot in the final product.
- Nicholas Sheffo
