In the Dark (2004)

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

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Let me save you and your time and recommend that you Do Not watch this! Occasionally a bad horror movie will have at least one redeeming quality. It's unintentionally funny, it has a creative death scene. even an over the top character that you love to hate. This had none of those.I watched this movie and was rooting for the characters to die just so it would be over. There is nothing new in the plot, the villain, or death scenes. Why did I keep watching it? I was not the person in possession of the remote. If I had been, I would have watched paint drying on the DIY network instead.Yet another movie where I think the good reviews are from family and friends of the cast and crew.

I am a fan of horror movies and this includes everything from Hollywood to low budget and grade B horror flicks.In the Dark, while done on a very low budget with actors and actresses that are not widely-known, was excellent in my opinion. Before I bought the movie, I read the back of it (as per usual) and I liked the idea of the abandoned insane asylum. This might be due to the fact that I am an avid ghost hunter with a locally known group. But the film was done with the same concepts as, "The Blair Witch Project", "The Saint Francisville Experiment", and "Paranormal Activity". And I love this kind of film. The jerky, real motion cameras moving about makes you feel like you are in the movie. The acting (although not top notch well-known actors and actresses) was great in my opinion. When I go ghost hunting, we aren't actors. We record some stupid things, but it's all good. Not every movie out there has to be of the highest budget and made for Hollywood. Some of the best films are the lower budget like the ones that I have mentioned above. Who cares if it is a fictitious documentary, what do you think most of Hollywood movies are? Kudo's to those who made this film! LeAnn Jones

I hate movies like this because the germ of a good idea is there and you can see some talent in front of and behind the camera, but the final product is so far off base that it makes me really irritated.I think the actors were probably good, although it seems they were allowed to improvise too much. A stronger script would have been very beneficial here. As someone else noted, their characters were amazingly shallow. You could take any two of them and swap the actors portraying them and you wouldn't have been able to tell. And all they talk about is drugs. This reveals little about their characters and gets boring after a few minutes, but it just doesn't stop.Other problems? It takes too long to get to the meat of the story, i.e., getting the kids inside the asylum. We get long, drawn out explanations by a detective and a nurse and the kids themselves filling in the exposition, only none of them can muster up enough enthusiasm to tell the tale without taking mini-breaks for smoking, typing or horseplay. If they don't care about the legend of Lizzie, why should we?When the kids finally do realize that Lizzie is still in the asylum, they have moments of panic, then they revert back to their druggy horseplay, then another panic, then horseplay, then panic again. It seems to me that if I knew a psycho was running around loose trying to kill me, I would go to and remain on Red Alert and not calm back down like nothing had happened.The editing was awful. There was no artistic buildup of suspense, the lack of sound in some security camera shots but admitted in others was jarring. I got confused several times about who was holding the camcorder and in fact, how many camcorders there actually were. For a film that claimed to be a real documentary, the use of scary music and hard rock was out of place. The movie didn't know if it was pretending to be a documentary or a real movie.The good things: while I think the director tipped his hand by showing us LIzzie's scarred face near the beginning, her determined running style was truly frightening. Whenever she ran through a shot, I usually felt a chill. The shot of her face in the window being lit by the flashlight was a good one, too. But I would have given her a weapon. Strangling kids isn't that scary. I liked the idea of her sucking out Barry's eyeball, but if you'd included in the legend that Lizzie carried a sharped spoon for scooping out eyes, it would have strengthened her fear factor. The revelation by Drako (it's not really a twist) at the end was good, but didn't have the umph that it required. And could we have heard some screams as the fire spread and the door was held shut?I applaud the production of indie films, but this one had such potential and just missed its target. Pity.

Therefore, I can honestly say, this was TERRIBLE. Firstly, every other positive comment HAS to be made by the people involved with the production. 8.5 rating? Really? Secondly, I love "fake-umentaries", but this was just bad. The acting was terrible... below B-grade. The "great camera work" was... well, up there with the acting. I know they weren't going for "slick", but it was just bad. The production value was actually quite good, which just adds to the disappointing end result. I can never tire of the "faux-cumentary" genre, but it's only been done right a few times. I'll give the filmmakers the credit of coming up with a cool concept, actually getting it off the ground and distributed, but they failed at making anything remotely watchable. Better luck next time.