Darkness

Leif Jonker's DARKNESS is a mixed bag.

The nomadic vampire Liven (Randall Aviks) wanders from town to town, creating havoc (and vampires) wherever he goes. Hot on his trail is Toby (Gary Miller), a sole-survivor of one of Liven's murderous rampages. Hellbent on destroying him (as well as any other vampire he happens to come across), Toby bands together with a group of teens from the latest town to fall victim to Liven's carnage.

That's about it for the plot, but that's not really the point of this film. It's more of an excuse for flashy camerawork and excessively gory effects. This is where the strength of this film lies.

The biggest problem with this film is the lighting (or the lack thereof!). The film is aptly named DARKNESS, since most of the time you can't tell what's going on! There are numerous scenes where there's just enough light to make out the image on screen, but not much else. The film would've definitely benefited from a few extra lights!

Although none of the youthful cast give spectacular performances (most of them seem to just be making up their lines as they scream frantically at each other), but within the context of the film, the actors do a decent enough job. Randall Aviks isn't as menacing as he tries to be. He looks more like a heavy-metal groupie than a vampire, but his scenes are minimal, so his presence isn't totally annoying.

The main attraction in DARKNESS is the gore, and it spills by the gallon! They're impressively done and they're graphic, as well as plentiful!

Jonker does his best to overcome his technical limitations to create a pretty cool little film, creating some memorable and haunting images - especially at the gruesome climax!

I'd like to see Jonker do something else, but I guess he's fallen off the planet. I've read reports in Fangoria that he was working on a film entitled "The Demon Machine". Anybody know anything about this? Hopefully Jonker will put together another project soon. If DARKNESS is any indication of his talent, he may very well have a promising career (provided that he invests in some more light kits).

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

I bought this movie recently and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was way better than I thought it would be. With the budget that the filmmakers had I didn't expect "From Dusk Till Dawn," but this movie is awesome all the same. There was even a shot of Liven (the vampire king) coming out of the ground that would later be used in "John Carpenter's Vampires."

This film shows vampirism among normal people and not wealthy and elegant aristocrats. The vampires in this film don't just suck blood from people's necks, they revel in it. There is a lot of cool gore in this film, too, which is amazing considering how low the budget was. The scene where a group of vampires start to disintegrate on a lonely road when the sun comes up in the middle of chasing the heroes of the film is the most memorable. Altogether this is an awesome film!