MICHAEL MANEY'S feature film DUSK, by MONARCH HOME ENTERTAINMENT, is a horror movie on a truly frightening level, walking the line, in words of the real Man In Black, between terror and horror – a challenge DUSK pulls off with a nightmarish twist. An official selection at the Cincinnati Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, and several others, DUSK challenges the current bland crop of clichéd serial killers, inclement weather-bound sharks, and European hostels.
True horror is that knock on the door in the dark of the night. It's that tire that blows out miles from nowhere; or the call from the doctor needing to see you in person. It's terror that's uncontrollable, unknowable, and unexpected. MICHAEL MANEY'S DUSK grasps all this in 90 minutes that leaves you horrified on the edge of your seat – and terrified that it will happen to you.
John Whitmore – finely portrayed by JOHN McGLOTHLIN – wakes up one perfectly normal morning, in his perfectly normal bed, to find his wife (played by THE WALKING DEAD'S highly underrated Alisha played by JULIANA HARKAVY) suddenly kidnapped – with only an eerie recorded message and a creepy stranger, David (FORD D'APRIX) – his only way to see his wife again
Don't let the mysterious kidnapping fool you into thinking this is a variety mainstream revenge flick. Other reviewers will agree that with each chilling twist in DUSK, any more of a detailed synopsis would ruin the experience, and cheat the viewer of director MICHAEL MANEY'S mastery of it. DUSK is told in flash-backs and flash-forwards, perfectly paced, deepening each terrifying riddle with an even more chilling answer.
More of an homage to Hitchcock and old school Polanski, writer/director MICHAEL MANEY'S film works on a psychological level, with a crafty, well-written script that leaves you to decide which is more horrifying – ghosts or the ghosts of memories. With a movie like DUSK, echoes of chilling madness haunt you long after the last credit.
MONARCH HOME ENTERTAINMENT has a visceral little gem in their hands with DUSK, the type of midnight movie you don't see in movie theaters anymore. DUSK reveals the true definition of terror in its last scene, a chilling truth that's as frightening as is its opening.
