Extreme Horror: REVIEW: The Dark (1994)

Title: The Dark

Also known as: N/A

Year: 1994

Genre: Horror

Language: English

Runtime: 87 min

Director: Craig Pryce

Writer: Robert C. Cooper

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109551/

Plot:

A wanted scientist and a retired FBI agent are both looking for the same thing. An underground creature, currently living under a graveyard. The scientist needs the creature alive for research and the FBI agent wants to kill it for revenging his dead partner. When the creatures starts to pull down gravestones and steal the coffins for food, the people working at the graveyard starts to take notice of the being, and the hunt of the creature begins as soon as the two looking for it arrives. The biggest problem is that they have to go into the monsters dark tunnels to find it.

Our thoughts:

I had this film on VHS when I was a kid, and I remember that it went under the name "Mörker" here in Sweden. Many years later when I tried to find the film again, I thought the title would either be "Darkness" or something totally different (let's face it, sometimes countries translate titles into the weirdest things). Eventually I found the film under the title "The Dark", and was sad to see that it only had a VHS release. This is the second film with Robert C. Cooper as writer that doesn't have a DVD release, and the other film is "The Club" (another childhood film that I recently reviewed)

The film is full of clichés, typical flaws, obvious actions and consequences, and the plot tries harder than it has to. Two men looking for a creature for different personal reasons, and innocent people coming between their rivalry and the monster. I wouldn't have needed the revenge plot of the FBI agent, because it didn't really bring anything interesting to the table, so the scientists plot would've been just enough. In the film we also have two graveyard workers, and two cops (one who dies early on, and the other one being Neve Campbell). The monster was interesting enough though. It always stays under ground, and I liked that it stole coffins to eat the bodies inside. The film definitely should've focused alot more on the monster and not as much on the reasons why they are looking for it, if you ask me. We don't have too much creature action until towards the end, which is a huge minus here.

The creature looks very good, I was surprised by the effects, because they were alot better than I remembered, but it's also because IMDb has a picture of the wrong film, and the monster on that cover looks really stupid so I was kinda expecting that one. Anyway, the monster looks like a big rat-ish beast, resembling the aliens from "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" (I think that's the one they were in), except more dangerous and evil looking. The creature looks good enough for me to be a bit angry that they don't show it that often, and when they do it's usually in the dark.

We're not talking about a flawless film here, which I think you understand by now. It has many negative parts, not too good of a plot, and small flaws that can annoy. Like "Where are all the light sources in the dark underground tunnels coming from?". These are things that makes this film anything but extraordinary, but it's worth checking out if you want to watch an unknown monster film with decent FX, because there can never really be enough of those. There are so many worse films out there, and you're better off spending time on this than on most shithole movies coming out of Hollywood lately.

Positive things:

- Neve Campbell. Let's face it, she looks pretty good.

- Cool monster.

- Good monster effects.

- I like the idea of the monster living under the graveyard.

- "Gotta love the smell of death in the morning."

Negative things:

- Not on DVD.

- Far from perfect.

Rating:

Gore: 0.5/5

Nudity: 0.5/5