Review of Edges of Darkness (2008) by Brian S — 31 Aug 2010

This low-budget horror flick has everything. Zombies, vampires, a computer run mad, the Antichrist and an insane priest. It's a smorgasbord of horror and, like most smorgasbords, what it has in quantity it lacks in quality.

Against the backdrop of a zombie holocaust, three sets of survivors try to keep surviving. First, there's a vampire couple who is struggling to find living victims. The man of the house, who tries and fails to emulate Samuel Jackson, brings home a woman for him and his wife to drain daily of blood. But there's something wrong with her; she's poisonous to vampires somehow. The more they drink her blood, the weaker they get.

Then there's a woman who rescues a mother and her child from the zombies. We learn that the woman's mate turned into a zombie and ate her baby. We learn that the boy is the Antichrist and that he's behind the ongoing end of the world, and that he's being pursued by a cruel priest. The woman kicks zombie ass repeatedly and teams up with the, who delivers what is easily the best line in the movie about not wanting the world to end. The Antichrist, it turns out, really likes fast food.

Finally, there's a net nerd and his dissatisfied girlfriend, holed up in their apartment. The nerd writes bad horror fan-fiction while the girlfriend watches bad horror movies. The nerd's gotten a new processor in the mail which, it turns out, is powered by absorbing living things. Much CAT5 cable ensues.

With all of this going on, one wouldn't think "Edges of Darkness" could drag, but in its jumping back and forth between the stories -- which never connect -- it gets badly lost. The acting is sub-par throughout, and some of the scenes make no sense at all (e.g., before we find out the vampire couple are vampires, they express sympathy for a neighbor who gets eaten by zombies. Are they supposed to be nice vampires who kidnap women and slowly drain them of blood?) The special effects and makeup are done in by the film's lack of a budget, and the whole bit with the priest chasing the 12 year old Antichrist never works for a moment.

There are enough good ideas here for three short films, despite the clumsy execution. Trying to cram it all into one feature-length video, though, detracts from all three. There's too much going on, none of it done very well, so in the end it's just a mess.