Dark Floors (2008)

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Getting off an elevator at a hospital, a small group of visitors find themselves trapped in a nightmarish parallel dimension where they are assaulted by deadly demons intent on using one of them for their devilish plans.This one turned out to be quite the utterly enjoyable effort. What really works well for this one is the central location being the appropriately creepy and chilling location such a hospital should be, and the atmosphere is creates here is quite impressive. The big scenes that come from exploiting this dreadful atmosphere comes off just as creepy where the situation itself, disembarking an elevator to an empty floor after a rather eventful trip in the first place, the entire place in complete disarray around the emptiness and finding the creepy inhabitants prowling the corridors works so well due to that atmosphere which sets up the later scenes in here. There's even more great pats here as in the later staircase encounter with the rattling noises following them to the site of flashlights on the lower floors which then gets the big shock of the reverberating gunshot for a rather chilling scene as well as other great demon encounters in elevators, endless corridors or throughout the various levels of the facility where this has big scenes in the nurses office or down in the parking garage. These scenes provide such an impressive set-up and base for the rather creepy look of the demons here to make those haunting work as it's creepy figures in a creepy location which always works well in such a situation as this manages such a fantastic pace with all the rather impressive scenes coming along so that there's a really enjoyable pace along the way here which is always useful in such films. Overall, these here are more than enough positives to hold off the film's single biggest flaw that comes into play here, which is the total cluelessness of nearly everything in here. This one offers no explanations for all of the important features here, which starts at the beginning with the reasoning for how the group initially appears in that parallel world, as though it's expected the cause is the elevator yet there's nothing there about it for sure which tends to really cast too much doubt onto this one. The fact that there's no real explanation for how the film's main set-up occurs is pretty problematic, and leads into the rationale for the whole film as it offers nothing about why the girls is needed for their plans. We never really get the importance of her or even why the creatures take others when they're not needed and getting to her would've been quite easy. All of these are brought up simply to buy into the general premise and actions of the film which is why they're so problematic here. Even with a somewhat goofy tone in the second half as they're being stuck in the other dimension with the demons that feels out of place, there's still not enough to really hold this down.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and minor themes of children-in- jeopardy.

I love horror movies that have a lot of mystery in them. But that doesn't mean you can have an entirely unexplained plot that doesn't wrap itself up in any way. This movie didn't answer any of the questions it presented, although it did seem like the director was trying to hint at what might be going on.There were no scares. They built up to scares with high intensity moments and then never delivered. Now, Lordi does say that he had to tone down the movie dramatically because of his financiers. That means you should have released a theatrical version and a director's cut. We are stuck with the toned down version of the movie that obviously removed the explanations and the scares.The fact that nothing was explained and all the scares had been removed demotes this movie to 2 stars.

First off all I will have to start off by saying that I am not a fan of Lordi, neither music nor theatrical appearance. Secondly, I am a huge fan of the horror genre with all its subgenres. I picked up "Dark Floors" from Amazon after having read through the synopsis of the movie, thinking that it actually did sound like an interesting enough thing, and not really caring that this is the official 'Lordi motion picture'.The story in "Dark Floors" is about single father Ben whose autistic daughter Sarah is in a hospital for treatments, but getting no improvement or much help from the staff, Ben decides to pull Sarah from the hospital and take her elsewhere. But as they step into the elevator, they and all inside the elevator find themselves stepping out into an abandoned labyrinth of hospital corridors as the door opens up. Scattered along are the mutilated corpses from the hospital, but horrifying creatures are stalking them, and a dark fate awaits them.Actually the storyline was quite good, and I enjoyed it. There was some really nice twists to the story that you hadn't predicted to come along, and there was a good continuity to the storyline. But most importantly, there was a really great atmosphere in the movie; a dark, brooding atmosphere with an impending sense of paranoia and doom. That really worked in favor of the movie.And another good thing about the movie was that there was zombies in it, and the make-up on the zombies was actually fairly good. Take some time to see the behind the scenes footage for some insight in the prosthetics and make-up.The actors and actresses in the movie were doing great jobs, so that really worked in favor of the movie, and I was surprised to see William Hope in a movie production like this.But then comes the bad thing about the movie; the band Lordi! It was the band members themselves that were posing as the menacing dark creatures in this twisted dimension that the protagonists found themselves in. And it was in their usual stage persona costumes that they were running around. So it was really, really hard to take it seriously for me. Why? Well, because I can't take a band seriously when they are dressed up in Halloween costumes during their performances (be it music or movie), and their costumes aren't really all that impressive.And another bad thing working against the enjoyment of the movie was the lack of lighting. A lot of the movie was shot in darkness or near-darkness so details to the hospital and the creatures was shrouded in shadows and left sporadic to behold. Which I personally find really annoying.In overall, the movie was a good attempt at a horror movie, but it was weighed heavily down by the band's stage persona costumes and the lack of lighting in many scenes. I am sure that fans of the band will love the movie, because it was actually a great enough movie in itself. I just approached it with no particular interest or love for the band, so I found it weighed down by certain things throughout the course of its 85 minutes running.

Stupidest movie I've ever forced myself to watch. Great visual effects but you don't establish any connections with any of the characters. Its like all this stuff is going on in the movie but you don't know why. It just starts to happens and develop abruptly without any meaning. What is the point of this movie? Even to be entertaining, movies need a reason or a plot. The characters all act bewildered but they seem to be "OK" with that. This movie just "happens" and the ending is just plain stupid. The main character doesn't say more than one sentence at a time and it's incoherent at best. No rhyme or reason. It seems like quite a bit of money was wasted on a pointless movie.