Left in Darkness

I thought this movie would be a lot better especially since a lot of the other Stephen J. Cannell straight to DVD movies i've seen were pretty good.Ones like It lives,the garden and room 6 were enjoyable but left in darkness was a good script and good idea but it reminded me more of an all ages movie that you would see on TV.The score was more like a Disney movie and the acting was OK but not great.It was just not scary.I can't believe Steve and the director actually thought it was scary when they said it was in the making of or behind the scenes extra feature.The character of Donovan was the worst written because when he died he was an 8 year old boy,so why was he 20 something all of a sudden when Celia died.I didn't realize you aged after you died.I assumed you stayed the same age.Also why was he her guardian angel while she was alive,and then a demon or devil when she dies.That whole part was stupid and made no sense.It would have made more sense if she met Donovan again as an 8 year old boy the way he appeared to her in a cemetery.But aging him and making him evil is just very inconsistent.And as if a little girl is going to fly through the air after nearly being hit by a car.The monsters looked more like something from a sci-fi or fantasy movie not a horror.It was very predictable and not well executed.I have seen movies with way lower budgets that are actually scary and seemed believable.This one was more of a disappointment.

I was drawn to this film by it's interesting premise. Of course, as a straight to video film I wasn't really expecting much even though I hoped for the best. The film sat somewhere in the middle for me. It was enjoyable and somewhat interesting, but I couldn't help but feel it had much more potential than it displayed. Perhaps on a higher budget with a better script, we could have seen something really special. When the movie was over, I shrugged... I wasn't overly satisfied, yet not disappointed. But as far as straight to video films go, this one is definitely in the upper class.

And what was up with Monica Keena's lips?

Pretty 21-year-old Celia (Monica Keena, who is very good at appearing traumatized, confused and panicked) goes to a frat party where a creep uses a date-rape drug on her. She dies from an overdose and awakens in a ghostly parallel world which, in spite of a lot of exposition, never gets as much of an explanation as it needs. She can see what's happening in the "real" world in mirrors and other reflective surfaces, but she can't figure out the complicated rules for getting into heaven, especially with all the demon-zombie types chasing her around. She is advised by a smug, inscrutable guy named Donovan (David Anders, who is perfect in the role) who claims to be the ghost who has been invisibly protecting her since childhood, formerly a child himself. Which begs the question: how and why would a person who died at age 8 grow into an adult after death? Celia's grandpa (the great Tim Thomerson) keeps popping in and out, sometimes as his kindly old self and sometimes as a snarling gray-faced corpse. In a real creative lowpoint, the ghoulies are called "soul eaters". This movie has a great professional look but is too complicated for its own good and violates its own internal logic on several occasions. If the dead "can't affect the living", as we're told, then how was the Donovan character able to pick Celia up and lift her out of the way of a speeding car when she was alive? And how is Donovan able to physically touch Celia right after he explains that nobody in the ghost dimension can touch her without her touching them first? Why didn't Donovan od something to prevent her being raped and murdered in the first place? These and other inconsistencies will probably distract you from the confused plot, but at least there's plenty of action and danger to propel things along. Swear words are used awkwardly in places that might cause unwanted laughter. The ending seems to imply that the story's most evil character has adopted a new identity in preparation for a future attempt on the soul of Celia's bimbo roommate, but this point isn't made clear. In fact, a lot of points aren't made clear. What was the bit about Celia's father thrown in there for? Why did he leave her, what was the nature of his briefly mentioned "sickness", and why did the writers think it was worth bothering with to have him make a quick appearance in the afterlife? Even with the "caught between life and death" theme, the movie doesn't have the intentional dreamlike feel of a story left deliberately illogical and surreal in the manner of CARNIVAL OF SOULS or JACOB'S LADDER; instead, it plays out like a script full of loose ends, cluttered with unhelpful details. Maybe viewers were meant to see it as the heroine's dream or delusion, rather than anything really happening in an actual place. The afterlife depicted in the BEETLEJUICE movies is more coherent than the one seen here. Though sloppy and admittedly no classic, LEFT IN DARKNESS is entertaining enough to watch and is certainly not among the worst horror efforts you've seen. Or maybe I should say it's not among the worst I've seen.

i thought this film was actually quite good. i watched it on 'zone horror', which usually airs low budget gore-fests (not a bad thing, i love em), so i was surprised to find this film which contained minimal guts, a couple of scares and was quite intelligent. i thought it had original ideas, in a genre which has spawned film after film of teen horror flicks which follow the same pattern over and over. i found the soul takers creepy, without being jump-behind-the-couch-pray-for-your-life scary. i did, however, guess the end ALL along, but I've spent my life watching this sort of thing, so i guess 99.9% of anything i watch.

if your the sort of person who likes a good scare, without all the gore and jumps most films have, i'd recommend this one. and in fact, as a person who DOES like all the gore and the scares, i still liked it.

I caught this on cable the other night, and to be honest I wasn't expecting much. You don't expect much from Zone Horror, not after a while - there are an awful lot of Z-grade turkeys on that channel, but occasionally they do come up with a gem, almost in spite of themselves. This film isn't quite a lost diamond, but it's not at all bad.

If nothing else, the writer and director have a bit of imagination. The plot goes like this: Celia goes to a party, messes about with a ouija board, then gets raped and murdered. Most films would take a drearily predictable tack at this point - Celia has to ensure that her killer is brought to justice, yadda yadda. You can see half a dozen movies with that plot on any given evening, if you really want to.

But this film takes another tack. Celia finds herself in something like Purgatory, a dangerous place inhabited by creatures who will eat your soul, given half a chance. By working through the ghosts of her past, and working with her 'imaginary' friend from childhood, she has to try to escape and get to, presumably, Heaven.

The bad news is that the budget was obviously about seven dollars. Purgatory is represented by something that looks very like suburbia, and there is at least one scene too many set in the front of a car. Parts of the plot are slightly repetitive, too, and the dialogue isn't particularly memorable.

But - and it's a very big but - everyone involved obviously cared about this movie. The acting is more than competent, especially from David Anders as the morally ambiguous childhood friend, who is a rarity in this type of horror film - a really interesting character. The movie whooshes along at a good clip, the plot actually makes some sense, and I found myself genuinely caring about Celia's plight, which was totally unexpected.

The most surprising thing, for me, was the the director of this movie also did a couple of truly horrible films that I saw recently, It Waits and Sasquatch Mountain. This movie is, thank God, in a different class to those cheese-fests. Hopefully this means that Steven Monroe is getting the hang of this directing business, and we can expect more like this in the future.