Beneath The Dark starts well enough. A young couple pull up into a hotel, looking for a place to stay for the night. As in so many hotel horrors that went before it, the place is deserted and what little people that are around are incredibly sinister. Sound familiar? That's because it is. Imagine Reeker, Vacancy and The Shining (try spot the references) thrown into a blender. That's the impression Beneath The Dark makes early on, and it's a good 'un.
Slowly the movie unfolds a series of flashbacks which give an insight into the past of a few of the characters we have seen throughout the movie and into the secrets that their past holds.
Paul and Adrienne are a run of the mill young couple experiencing a few relationship problems (Vacancy anyone?) and Frank is the lonely hotel owner who is sinister in his overt friendliness. All sounding pretty run of the mill so far? Here's where it veers off.
Through the pre-mentioned flashbacks, and also the bizarre reveals we begin to realise there's a lot more going on in Paul's life than meets the eye, and from some reason, the events of the night seem to be unfolding around the mysterious secrets of his past. As the intensity of these bizarre incidents is cranked up the viewer begins to feel increasingly unsettled and also engrossed. The slow burning build-up beats every last inch of possible tension out of what is, in all fairness, a very lame script. Slowly Beneath The Dark appears to be building to something magnificent, and then boom, the end has happened. Where was our sensational denouement? Nowhere to be seen. In a finish that's likely to leave more questions than answers, and not in the good David Lynchian way, the viewer is left feeling somewhat ripped off.
You put up with the bad acting and poor dialogue for what appears to be an interesting plot and quite decent direction to be left feeling somewhat dumbfounded as to how the writer felt that to be an acceptable finish to the movie. Beneath The Dark as a result, appears to be a case of a writer biting off more than he can chew, but with some very blatant signs of potential for the future. All in all I give it 6/10.
