Darkness

The title of this review sums up my opinion on this gore scale-tipping splatterfest. This is a movie made by gorehounds for gorehounds.

The "story" follows a vampire outbreak in what looks like a small town. A few metalheads have to defend themselves against hordes of zompires (I call them this because even though the movie is about vampires, they are basically zombies who can't stand the sun). Gore ensues as some kids die, some carve the zompires up with chainsaws and other weapons, all leading up to the goriest meltdown that is one of the goriest scenes I have ever seen.

Like I said, this movie is for gorehounds and basically no one else, but if you seek splatter, look no further than Leif Jonker's Darkness.

A vampire movie like no other. Leif Jonker should be praised for his attempts to drag the vampire genre out of the terrible goth phase its currently lingering in.

A well written plot combines with great gore and some genuinely terrifying scenes to make a great movie. The sense of menace and terror is never far from the screen, and the end is truly horrific

Okay, before I start my review, I would like to make something unmistakably clear, DO NOT BELIEVE ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT THIS MOVIE IS AS GORY OR GORIER THAN DEAD ALIVE AKA BRAINDEAD!!! The amount of gore in this movie was highly disappointing, save for one long vampire melting sequence near the end, there are some stabbings, some bitings, a lot of off-screen stuff, maybe two or three actual on screen deaths. There was actually so little gore in the movie that I stopped thinking of this movie as a gore film and started looking at it as an '80s style B-horror movie, and it actually was entertaining in that aspect. Nevertheless, there are still several other little things in this movie to bug you and/or get on your nerves. Including but not limited to:

• The vampires... or zombies... or both,... Yah, I'm not really sure what they were.

• In the first part of the movie, the film constantly cuts from "19 minutes to sunset" to "2 minutes to sunrise" to "23 minutes to sunset" and so on and so on and so on. It does this a LOT, sometimes with nothing happening in between.

Cut to two minutes before sunset, guy sits in his car, cut to twenty minutes before sunrise.

It's just really unnecessary.

• There's one scene where a guy is being eaten by vampire-zombies in a car wash, while his girlfriend stands a couple feet away and screams "No!". We then see him being eaten for a while, and cut back to the girl still standing there, probably meaning she was just standing and watching the whole time.

• The acting is really not that good to be honest, it didn't really bother me any, but there are probably a lot of people that will be bothered by it, so I thought I should bring that up.

• Almost the entire soundtrack is heavy metal, whether that is a good or bad thing depends on the viewer. I personally liked it myself.

Also, the movie is called "Darkness - The Vampire Version". OK, so there's another version? I thought it was just rough translation but according to the credits that list credits for "both versions" of the movie, I could be wrong. I wonder if the other version has more gore.

There is apparently a VHS version and a digitally remastered DVD version with less gore but with some "spit and polish" applied to it like in the American unrated version of Dead Alive. I really don't know which one I watched, I don't think it would make much of a difference either way.

6.5/10

Don't listen to the other guy. Sure, this movie is a mess as far as technique, lighting, sound, budget, etc. is concerned, but for a low-rent Hi-8 splatterfest this is one of the best I've seen in the independant market for quite some time. Darkness holds many moments of cinematic glory - the chainsaw farmhouse scene, the ending sunrise melting scene, the fact that most the vampires wear Iron Maiden T- shirts... This film is a buried gem and I implore all true fans of independent gore-based cinema to hunt this one down. Leif Jonker, I salute you. -RBT

Leif Jonker's micro-budgeted horror film "Darkness" has absolutely nothing new or special to offer, but it's still very much recommended to gorehounds because of the amazing enthusiasm and energy our director brings to the screen! This guy obviously is a big horror fanatic and he merely just wanted to express his passion by making his very own gory indie-flick! The story can be summarized in two lines: a bunch of young metal kids return home from a concert, only to discover that their entire community was killed by a ravenous vampire. They decide to stay to avenge their relatives and join forces with another teenager who saw his friends getting massacred in a convenience store. That's it! The rest simply involves extremely filthy set pieces and extraordinary gory make-up effects! Jonker occasionally brings genuine tension and there even are some truly ingenious camera shots to admire! The acting's pretty good, especially considering all the cast members are inexperienced friends of the director, and the OTT gruesome climax is particularly enjoyable. Really not that bad.