Review of Dark Rising (2007) by Bryan G — 21 Aug 2009

At the beginning of Dark Rising, a little girl is being told bedtime stories by her father. She has some strong words of criticism towards his stories, resulting in her saying, "Daddy, the female characters come off a little superficial." Pretty big word for such a little girl, but it's very fitting with how the female characters of writer/director Andrew Cymek's Dark Rising are written for his film.

When reading the description of Dark Rising, the movie sounded like it could have been a lot of fun. I was hoping for a movie that didn't take itself seriously, offered up a ridiculous premise and contained a lot of good gory mayhem to make for a entertaining time. But Cymek's film is anything but what I expected. It has zero fun, zero laughs, terrible acting and bad writing. And none of this even works in a campy, b-grade kind of way.

Dark Rising has a lot of failed attempts at various things. The humor is just terrible, with puns and sight gags that don't go as well as planned. And then the action doesn't work out either. All of the sword play in the film is obviously choreographed fight sequences that are more embarrassing to watch than anything else.

The cast in the film aren't a decent bunch either. They all have that softcore porn look and feel to them, which makes sense since two of the female characters are lesbians. Now the lesbian plotline doesn't do much for the story, other than make Jason's (Landy Cannon) attempts at getting back with his ex difficult now that she prefers women. And it leads up to a rather pointless girl on girl love making scene that is just as silly as anything else in the film, and nowhere near as hot to watch as you'd expect.

I did like the creature effects in the film, which were fake but effective because the film used practical techniques to create their monster. But that just wasn't enough to win me over. The movie leaves itself open for a possible sequel, which has me bewildered. On one hand I would like to see if the second film could take all the mistakes of this first film and turn them around for a more entertaining experience. On the other hand, I can't help but fear that sitting through another film with these characters would be just as aggravating as the first time.