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Two things and two things only drew me to this movie. The first was the cover art. I’ll give the Fangoria Frightfest movies this, the artwork on just about all of their movies is very eye catching, with DARK HOUSE, in my opinion, taking top honors. The second was that Jeffrey Combs was in it.
The plot, as it’s described on the back, is, like the PIG HUNT description, rather misleading. Well, in DARK HOUSE’s case, not so much misleading as focusing on one aspect of the movie, which makes it sound like a rip-off of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, or a variation on it’s theme, which it is, but there’s a whole other theme being explored in this movie that’s only hinted at on the back cover.
I’ll explain what I mean by that later, for there’s a twist that comes into play. And, yes, the twist will be explored fully, but I will surround it with the Spoiler Feature so everyone won’t be forced to read it, if they don’t want to.
In general the movie, for whatever reason, made me think of those after school specials they used to do way back when, and it also reminded me of something I might have seen in the mid to late 80s on late night cable. Now, having already listened to the commentary, I can tell you the filmmakers did not, whatsoever, have either one of those concepts in mind when they made this movie. Without having heard from anyone else who has seen this flick, I cannot say if those two feelings are shared experiences. For me, they just came through in the visual style, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. I loved a lot of those flicks I saw in the late 80s on cable, and why it should remind me of an after school special? Well, I remember coming home from school one day, and at four o’clock they ran the LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, that TV movie with Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane.
Since it was being run around the time they used to put on those after school specials I thought nothing of it, but there’s a scene at the end where the headless horsemen is carrying a severed human head, his presumably, and he throws it at Ichabod, and I remember that head scaring the shit out of me, even the close-up of it as the horseman chucked it at Crane.
Dark House starts off with three little girls bike riding down a street, they stop in front of a house, both of these locations were unique looking to me, and coupled with that after school special/SLEEPY HOLLOW vibe, I instantly liked what I saw.
As the scene goes on we quickly understand that this house, and it’s owner, has a reputation, and one of the girls actually works up the nerve to venture inside. This is where the flick becomes something more than that description printed on the DVD case’s back cover. Something a lot grimmer. What she sees when she quietly opens up the front door and steps in is a little kid laying dead on the floor, surrounded by a pool of blood. For some reason, she isn’t deterred, she presses on and finds more dead children strewn about the house, most if not all are also surrounded in pools of their own blood.
My first reaction to this scene was shock. When’s the last time you saw a movie where a kid was murdered, or found murdered? Or a bunch of them are found expired in their own bodily fluids? Not many, I’ll wager. Having read very little about this flick on Fangoria’s website, which I did because it held no interest for me—this was before I saw the artwork and learned Jeffrey Combs’ part wasn’t the cameo I assumed it was going to be. But, once, I saw this scene, I decided to make myself a promise that no matter how shitty this flick started to become, I would stick with it, just to see where this child-killing angle would, or could, go, and just how gruesome it would, or could, get.
As the scene unfolds, and as this little girl creeps silently through the house, following those dead children like bloody bread crumbs, she comes upon the kitchen and a woman standing over the sink. The hand dangling at her side is nothing but a bloody stump, and the other, we soon learn, is shoved inside the garbage disposal. The assumption I quickly came to was that her death was voluntary!
Still the girl doesn’t look the least bit horrified.
The doorknob of the pantry, on the other side of the kitchen rattles, she creeps past the body and peers through the old fashioned keyhole. A blinking eye stares back at her, finally shocked out of her numbness, she freaks out, subsequently slips on all the blood splashed on the floor and manages to knock herself into dreamland.
A nice transition occurs now, the prone little girl merges into a prone, grown woman lying on a bed, restlessly sleeping. We have now transitioned out of the prologue and into the main part of the movie, the one described on the back of the DVD case.
DARK HOUSE is book ended by a prologue and an epilogue, which fit nicely together, but the meat of the flick in the middle feels like a separate movie. But not so separate that it becomes a turnoff. The events of both pro and ep bleed nicely in and out of the middle section, shifting the movie from gut retching grim to a fun house ride before plunging back into child killing grimness all over again. Interestingly that shift fits the movie since it’s about Walston Rey, (Jeffrey Combs), a renowned creator of haunted house attractions. DARK HOUSE even manages to delve a little ways into Science Fiction, for Rey has aligned himself with the creator of a new, cutting edge holographic technology, which he intends to use in his new attraction.
And, where to set-up DARK HOUSE? How about in the house of a crazy ass, abusive, bible thumping woman who went nuts one day and killed all her foster children. I was also shocked, pleasantly this time, when I learned Diane Salinger was playing this evil creature, named, Ms. Darode. You all might know her from her William Malone’s excellent Alien-rip-off, CREATURE. I also remember her in Tim Burton’s PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, but none of that matters, now, because here she is the bad guy, and, I tell ya, she makes one hell of a chilling bad guy, not to mention evil spirit that still haunts her old abode. Ultimately, she ends up fucking with that aforementioned, cutting edge, holographic technology, so much so, the funhouse holograms are able to take on enough solid reality to make any encounter with them a pending fatality.
Before all that happens, though, Rey heads down to the local theater and hires a bunch of drama students to play various roles in his DARK HOUSE attraction so as to give the holograms more convincing life. Surprisingly, none of these kids end up being douche bags. I liked them all. Key among them is Claire, the girl we saw in the prologue, and as a grown woman later on after the transition. Facing her fears and overcoming her memory block is the primary impetus used to get her into that house again, this time with all her doomed friends.
Another nice touch that makes this flick unique is the interior of Darode’s house. The rooms, the ones without the attractions, definitely catch the eye. Don’t know if that was Darode’s taste or Rey’s when he acquired the house and turned it into DARK HOUSE. His “Corridor Of Blood,” as he calls it, is a very creepy and moody lit hallway, sans blood, of course.
At this point in the tale, Rey wants to put his attraction through a test run, so, after all the kids are set up in their respective roles, he invites, if I can recall correctly, a local reporter and a some other guy who writes for either a magazine or a newspaper. The woman, the local reporter, gives Rey attitude about why in Christ would he want to build his attraction in the Darode house? All Rey says, in the end, is “. . . just tell me if it’s scary or not.” I’m paraphrasing here.
My only real problem with the movie is that the holograms, the attractions he set up to scare people, are things we’ve seen a million times. A mad scientist scenario, a torture chamber, a room where a serial butcher has carved up his trophies, a mock attack from some chained up vampire women, zombies, and even a Templar Knight wielding a mace.
One other thing I have to gripe about is how much filmmakers are relying too much on CGI for things that could be done in camera. It’s now gotten to the point where I’m seeing CGI blood spurts in movies, which, to me, seems rather stupid to do, and that’s only because the CGI blood looks just like CGI blood. What happened to a practical, in camera blood spurt? And, there’s a death in the film where a head is obliterated with a mace, well, instead of doing a nice animatronic effect, the skull and carnage are all CGI, so are a lot of other little things throughout the flick. I can understand using CGI for the holograms, which is almost a must, but for some of the others, they simply could have used puppetry, which I would have preferred.
As I stated before, I assumed Jeffrey Combs’ role would be small, he’d come in set up the show and get offed right quick, but he’s in the movie for a good portion of it before he’s inevitable death scene occurs.
All right, now we come to that portion of the review where the twist in the tale becomes evident, and for those who don’t want to know a damn thing about it, as you can see precautions have been taken. So, for those who don’t want the rest of the flick ruined and who won’t read any further, I will end this review for you here by saying the twist actually elevates it beyond the sum of its parts, making the DVD a must buy, not a must rent.
There’s a clue to the twist in the beginning, after the students have arrived and Rey and his two assistants show them around. Eventually, the tour ends in the basement where they’re introduced to the tech specialist who has created this new hologram technology and where all the computers are kept for their generation.
As Clare stares at the furnace over in the corner, Darode and a circle of kids materialize. I thought, is that some kind of ghostly manifestation? No, in the commentary, the director mentions it’s a memory she’s flashing back on. But, since I hadn’t listened to it yet, I thought, why is she seeing this and no one else? The memory explanation crossed my mind, but I sort of dismissed it, because it doesn’t jive with what I saw in the prologue and the transition.
With thirty minutes left of the movie, after Darode has infiltrated the computer mainframe and fucked everything up, and after everyone has been killed by the rampaging holograms, except for Clare, of course, we finally get the truth. And that truth comes out when Clare, in the process of fleeing Darode’s spirit, locks herself in the pantry in the kitchen. Hint, hint—see where I’m going with this?
As she stares through the keyhole at Darode’s ghost standing in the kitchen doorway . . .
. . . the scene shifts and we’re back in the midst of that child killing carnage, except, now, we get to see how it started, and how it grimly ends. Thank God the slaughter of the children is kept off screen, but that doesn’t mean I got off scot-free. As Young Clare hides herself in the pantry, we get to here all the knife stabs and the disturbing screams the kids utter.
And to make the scene even more unsettling we get to see the psychosis of Darode’s character post slaughter as she suddenly realizes the horror she has wrought and punishes herself by shoving her hands in the garbage disposal. Diane Salinger’s acting here and at a few key other places in the movie, mostly where she needs to show off her evil persona, are at times stunningly hard to watch, for she does it so goddamn well. The most unsettling is her aforementioned post slaughter scene where she breaks down completely.
Back to the twist, for there’s more to it. Clare and Darode finally have their long in the making confrontation, but we don’t see it. They both rush each other, the screen fades to black and when it finally fades back in Clare is being found, on the floor, in some kind of catatonic state, with the knife she had in her hand, by two cops.
Now, the epilogue . . . and it’s told through the eyes of a detective who’s trying to understand why all these students and Rey had to die. His theory? Clare did it, and we see the event in question as he explains to his fellow detective what he presumes went down.
The crime scene photos are most telling, for they show all the bodies, but most of them don’t sport the carnage, or any carnage at all, that corresponds to how they were supposed to have been murdered by the individual holograms that attacked them. There are two, perhaps, that are in sync, but that’s it. And, the detectives “visual flashback theory” is shockingly, very plausible. In this epilogue we also learn she was in a mental institution for being suicidal and homicidal and generally all around fucked in the head.
So, what does that mean for what I just saw? The “supernatural event” could have been all part of Clare’s damaged mind, and that’s how she saw things happen.
Case closed, movie over, right?
Not so fast.
The last few minutes are then devoted to a young girl and guy standing pensively outside Darode’s home, this new girl is the girl from the prologue, the one who slipped on the blood and knocked herself out. She too wants closure, and when she and her boyfriend enter the house again, she certainly gets it, from Darode’s evil spirit!
So, now, what does that mean for what I just saw?
The director in the commentary says he knows how it all went down but doesn’t tell, and likes the fact that it’s presented in this weird double Twilight Zone fashion.
My personal theory goes like this, once Clare was in the house, Darode possessed her and made her do all the killing, so, the part of the movie where the shit starts to hit the fan, and people start taking forced dirt naps, is really only occurring in her mind as she tries to fight the possession.
Case closed, movie over.
Man, that was a helluva ride!
