Review of Dark Town (2004) by Ed C — 30 Sep 2013

One line summary: Suburban dysfunction plus vampirism meets inner city gang violence.

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Slumlord Curtis Armstrong Sr goes to collect from his properties. He gets more than he bargained for from his tenants. He returns to his calm, safe, suburban home for his birthday. Then he starts the blood bath after being very creepy. He bites Heather, which turns her.

Heather has a Latino gangster boyfriend, Cinque, who is a drug dealer. Some black youth decide to liberate Cinque's money stash, which he keeps in Heather's room. Rakeem gets two men and Kisha to go with him to do the theft.

The neighborhood watch stops the black group, but Rakeem pulls a pistol on them when they were distracted. One of their party gets shot by the watch; they hide at the Armstrong house. Cinque shows up too, to get his cash. Heather kills him.

The vampire monster status transfers in perhaps 20 minutes, which accelerates all the proceedings.

The gang violence just serves as feeding sources for the new vampires, or whatever they are. There's a small amount of drama in whether a person can fight off the change or not.

Jen and Rakeem fight if off somewhat, and try to kill all the other vampires. When that does not work too well, they take another exit. That they survived at all is just ridiculous.

-----Scores-----.

Cinematography: 4/10 Soft focus. Too much darkness. Too many home movies that are total garbage in terms of visuals.

Sound: 6/10 OK, but not great. The loud parts are way too loud, and the soft parts too soft.

Acting: 1/10 Would someone please stay in the same accent? How did Rakeem go from being low on courage to being able to fight off being a vampire?

Screenplay: 2/10 The first 25 minutes were almost opaque in terms of motivation. The rules for dealing with the supernatural seemed to change every so many minutes. Some consistency might have been nice. The ending was unlikely at best.

Special Effects: 3/10 Horribly bad. Cheap, poor, stupid.