21 November 2017. This low budget sci fi movie is about the possible teleportation of people, an essential way to save some from the end of the world. While the quality of the photography along with the soundtrack was decent enough, the beginning scene followed by the next scene made it difficult to follow the story and even though there is an attempt to reconnect later in the movie, it just adds to the confusion. There is no character development in the movie and it's hard to be sympathetic with any of the movie's characters or their relationships, motivations, most of their plans, or intentions. The acting by the African American security personnel was flat and without emotional sincerity and the podcast guy also doesn't seem to have a screen presence, a portrayal that offers a sense of theatrical personality that can grab an audience's interest. Some of the dialogue in the movie just seems to be read from a script that doesn't really ring true without an emotional connection and are just strung together resulting in a blunted affect.
By the fifth way through the movie, the inclusion of the President and his small contingent seem more and more to be artificial that reeks of a limited budget for the film. In one scene where the President and his two aides enters into a secret experiment the movie becomes quite unbelievable and almost unwatchable in terms of suspending one's belief in what is going on in the movie. The aides later presence in the movie seems also ludicrous and out of place without explanation. Later there is one scene with two guys that the audience has no idea what they talking about and what if anything they have to do with the movie. Additionally, the threat to the planet based on current science and everyday experience also seems so bizarre as to be unbelievable, making the movie all that much harder to watch because of how the scriptwriter set up the entire story without being able to resolve the matter in an acceptable manner. The script just seems so haphazard and made up as to be more a bunch of foolish ideas than a real story, including a number of out-moded clichés of personal sacrifice and integrity, like a poor soap opera. There is even an unexpected, unexpected pregnancy that just comes out of nowhere from a more confusing union including the idea of memory wipes even as the nature of the movie remains still out of reach of most audience members more than half way through the movie.
By the two-thirds way into the movie, the reveal is offered up and the low-budget nature of the film really shows through as the movie's credible concept is offered up without a convincing style or flourish, but with dull, hyper-dramatics transforming the movie into more of a thriller than science fiction or the more terrifying death throes of an entire planet or solar system. From the a rather incongruous change in personality occurs with some of the characters in order to adhere to the American ending of the movie. Perhaps the best thing about the movie is its title "Before the Dark." But really it needed a better writer and director and/or cast it's difficult to tell. Finally, there is a cute last shot of a building with a quite recognizable name of it for those that manage to get through the movie. Sadly, upon reflection, this movie could have been a really great movie with more patient attention to screen writing. Interestingly, this a one of the few movies that a second viewing might be worthwhile. Much better alternatives would be Peter Fonda's low budget effort in Idaho Transfer (1973) that offers up a much more credible and eerie presentation worthy watching, his second of only three pictures he ever directed or Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) starring Roy Thinnes about an astronaut who finds himself on a similar but strange planet.
