Dark Windows

... but as it turns out, I found it quite enjoyable. This showed up in my Prime recommendations, and I thought the synopsis sounded good enough to give it a watch. After all, how can you go wrong with a movie about teenagers being stalked by a mad man (though I doubt any of the actors were anywhere near teens).

The acting was quite good, but what surprised me the most was that the actions of the characters was quite logical compared to other movies in this genre. I did think it might have some good gore, but if you're looking for that, you'll be disappointed.

This is one of the rare times I didn't look at the rating of a film before watching it, and I'm glad I didn't because the low rating might have made me pass it up. I have no idea why it would receive anything less than a 6. Perhaps it simply wasn't what people expected, but in my case, it was much better.

In a seemingly endless sea of absolutely unwatchable garbage which never should have been made, this decent film seems excellent, relatively speaking.

The acting is mostly good, the casting is mostly good, the music is pretty good, the editing and shaky cam are not ridiculously overdone and a few of the lines in the script are actually great, which I don't think I've been able to say for the last 100 movies I've tried to watch. For example, When Monica (Annie Hamilton) says, "This is a really good closet for hide and seek... if we decide to play." That is a great piece of dialogue which offered insight into the character's personality, the house itself, and the character's personal connection with the house. It was unexpected, funny and seemed realistic in spite of it being out of place, given the circumstance.

I love that they didn't overdo the makeup and let Tilly's (Anna Bullard's) freckles shine. That is so rare.

I don't know if they had a bowl of ice cubes on set or what, but the braless diamond cutters throughout really give you a sense of a chill in the air.

The plot and twists are actually pretty plausible as far as horror movies go.

If you're watching movies on your computer at home alone, this is about as good as your going to find these days. Hopefully it signals the beginning of the end of the crapfest the film industry has been for the last decade or so.

No pun intended - this is a little horror movie. So I reckon if you suspend your disbelief and cut this some slack .. well you may find this interesting. Especially the spin or twist or whatever you would call it. I think it kind of loses a lot of momentum once there is ... well the ending (resolution).

There are some interesting and good moments before. You have some nice jump scares (if you call them nice) and some character beats ... that may work in the context of the movie or not. The actors do their best, but you may find their characters annoying ... and you have not seen anything yet. Roll (or rather ride ... sorry not sorry) with it ... otherwise you will be bored I reckon.

"Dark Windows" tells the story of four friends -- Tilly, Monica, Peter, and Ali. They are out for a ride one night and there is an accident and Ali is killed. The other three friends feel awful, especially Tilly, who was driving the car. After an uncomfortable situation at Ali's wake, Tilly, Monica, and Peter go out to Monica's grandparents' old house to spend a few days and blow off some steam. But strange things seems to be happening once they get there ...

"Dark Windows" was a one of the great low-budget surprises that show up once in a while if you're a genre fan. Given the familiar storyline, I was just sort of hoping it would be serviceable but it was so much more that that. It lets its secrets unfold slowly and organically, and plays very cleverly on our expectations. It knows what we are expecting and then delivers something different.

Technically, it's great -- well lit and clear sound. We spend most of the film with just our main three characters and the acting is uniformly excellent among all of them. And it nailed the ending, playing out in a way that was totally unexpected to me and was far nastier and harsher than I anticipated.

Recommended without reservation.

The scariest thing about this "thriller" is that someone read the script and greenlit it. There is absolutely nothing in this movie we haven't seen countless times in much better movies, except for one scene (actually just one shot) near the end.

The actors can act, I'll give them that, but the characters are one dimensional and the fact that they spend half the movie bickering does nothing to make them any more palatable.

After the first act, there is literally a full hour when nothing even remotely dramatic happens. Everything "scary" is jammed into the last 20 minutes, and it's so lame it's not worth sticking around for.

Any of the glowing reviews here must have come from the cast and crew. Either that or the reviewers are the kind of easily triggered pantywaists who have a nervous breakdown if their fast food order has the wrong kind of fries.

If you're in the mood for this kind of movie, you'd be better served rewatching "I Know What You Did Last Summer" or any of its sequels or remakes.