Review of Beneath the Dark (2010) by Jamie B — 28 Aug 2012

This thing gets bad reviews everywhere, which kind of surprises me. I'm going to guess that it is a matter of either it not delivering enough "horror" for those coming into the movie (for either jump scares or gore), or the moralizing is too strong. Regardless what the reason is, I found Beneath the Dark to be an engaging, thought-provoking experience.

The "twist" is easy to see coming--though they are masking it from the main character more than the viewer. Most people should see where the movie is headed--I saw it coming about 10 minutes before the twist happened--I suspect most people will see it coming long before then. But in this case, while the twist is important, guessing it beforehand doesn't really make the impact of the final few minutes in any way because the true importance of the end is not in the twist, but in the character and his decisions.

Then again, maybe everyone else reviewing has the right idea--maybe this movie does suck. Because it fumbles the most important part of any movie: the post-twist ending. It's not just the ending, though that is the element of the overall problem which is most obvious. But the script feels like it is in love with ambiguity. As such, certain things which should not be confusing ARE in fact confusing. At least for me. So much of the script feels so carefully constructed that these ambiguous segments really throw a wrench into the machine. After reading a couple of explanatory comments on IMDB's message board I can safely say now that "I get it", and I feel silly for having not seen it before. Yet the fact remains that even though everything is perfectly arranged in my head now (and even have the audacity to find it all rather brilliant), when the credits started to roll I was saying "What? WHAT?".

But even then, everything else about Beneath the Dark engaged me so strongly I was fully prepared to rate this strongly.