Movies
Beneath The Darkness
“Beneath The Darkness takes a decent plot, most recently utilized in films like Disturbia and the remake of Fright Night, and goes its own way. Only this time, the path is short and uneventful.”
A group of teenage caricatures break into the house of the town’s resident ‘creepy guy,’ only to discover he’s been keeping his dead wife’s corpse in the spare bedroom. Beneath The Darkness takes a decent plot, most recently utilized in films like Disturbia and the remake of Fright Night, and goes its own way. Only this time, the path is short and uneventful.
Dennis Quaid is Mr. Ely, Smithville’s mortician. We meet him as he kidnaps an old friend, makes the man dig up a bodiless grave, and proceeds to bury him alive while telling him he knows what he did. Immediately, two basic plot ideas popped into my head: either this dude killed someone and is getting the Frailty treatment or he banged Mr. Ely’s wife. From here, carry the story through Scream high school territory and then move into waiting for Shia LaBeouf to see something through the rear window. Throw in some examples that make it obvious the writer has been out of high school for some time, and make sure you have one of those moms written in – you know, one of those types that almost appears to be a stand-in – and you get the most consistent part of the movie’s plot. Add a second layer that has the main teenager character seeing ghosts and angels and hearing disembodied voices once when he was 7 years old, and I don’t understand what’s going on. This part of the movie is so disconnected that I’m thinking there had been a ton of rewrites or someone used a stick of dynamite in the editing bay. The most disturbing part is I just did my research on the writer and this was his only screenplay produced. Note I said was. Bruce Wilkinson passed away in March of 2011. More than likely Beneath the Darkness was a completely different piece before it was chopped up, redone, and only given a ‘Written By Bruce Wilkinson’ credit because of his passing.
The Blu-ray is fine, but far from spectacular. The DVD includes a behind-the-scenes piece that is literally behind the scenes – it’s a camera behind the camera as a few scenes are filmed and it’s less than two minutes long. There’s also a trailer and the most annoying menu I’ve ever encountered. I feel bad for the musical artist that is featured because I am certain countless others will never listen to their band again after the minute long loop of a song that plays during the menu.
The one redeeming factor in this movie is Dennis Quaid. As psychotic Mr. Ely, Quaid excels. Yet I have the sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t have to try very hard. Perhaps in the 20 years since the peak of his career he’s felt the sting of once in a blue moon hits and has honed the anger. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t mess with him as his simple delivery and breathing had me tense with anxiety over when he’d snap next. It’s too bad he didn’t have more to work with.
Beneath the Darkness is simple and to the point, though it did leave me with one burning question: where did that parade come from?
The official Resident Evil trailer has arrived this morning, bringing a closer look at the nonstop survival horror ride filled with references to Capcom’s classic game series and T-virus gore.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18 from Sony.
The trailer below introduces Austin Abrams (Weapons) as Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in a non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
Cregger directs from a script he co-wrote with Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapters 3 & 4).
The trailer keeps its focus on the central human character arriving amidst an outbreak, revealing very little in the way of its mutated threats. The film’s director previously teased not to expect a zombie-heavy film.
Cregger explains, “This movie doesn’t utilize zombies that much. It’s much more focused on the weird creature stuff than the zombies. There’s really only two scenes, maybe three, where there’s proper zombie stuff going on. And two of those three are in the trailer.”
“But other than that… I wouldn’t call this like a zombie movie,” Cregger previews. “I just feel like, you have this opportunity for the T-Virus to do all these really fascinating things to the human body, and to the world around you, and so to just limit it to zombies feels like a squandered opportunity. So I tried to really vary it up.”
According to the film’s listing on the AMC Theatres website, the runtime for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil is 1 hour, 35 minutes, making it one of the franchise’s shortest movies.
And we are expecting a very intense, fast-paced 95 minutes from the film.
Watch the new trailer below, spot the signature Resident Evil shotgun shells and more.