Reign in Darkness

I collect vampire movies....All of them. The good, the bad, the ugly of them. Everything from Underworld to the original Dracula featuring the one and only Bela...So when I found this in a bin for only $5.50, I thought SWEET!!! A new vampire movie for about the same price as a rental.

Now.....all I can say is that I want my $5.50 back with INTEREST. I would have given the movie a ZERO instead of a one, but there wasn't that option. Don't waste your time or your money...Even if you have the flu and can't get out of the house and it is the only thing you can find on some obscure cable program....Don't do it. You'll CRY when you watch it because you can actually feel your brain cells dying and shriveling up.

This movie is so completely awful it's difficult to know where to start! Firstly, 'El Mariachi' is namedropped on the DVD cover and we are led to believe this is a similar looooow budget effort. But in the commentary track the directors Kel Dolen and David Allen let slip it cost a million dollars! Now, by Hollywood standards that is low, but I wouldn't exactly call that a shoestring budget! 'Pi', 'Man Bites Dog' and 'Laws Of Gravity' are three movies that immediately spring to mind that show what can be done with very little money but TALENT and drive, and closer to home Peter Jackson's 'Bad Taste' was a cheap but original and entertaining horror movie that I really enjoyed. So there's no excuse for why 'Reign In Darkness' is so absolutely terrible! I can't think of anything good to say about this. The script stinks, there are no real characters with any substance or funny lines or any real logic behind it. The digital photography is passable I suppose but the acting stinks and the fake American accents are laughable. I couldn't help but wonder why Dolen and Allen made such an unoriginal and uninspired wanna-be mainstream movie in the first place. Why bother trying to compete with Hollywood product like 'Blade' when instead they could attempt something totally extreme and unlike anything Hollywood already produces? Someone like say, the astonishing Takashi Miike would be a more fruitful inspiration rather than this third-rate John Woo schtick. Surely being outside the mainstream allows you to be MORE creative and adventurous, not less! Maybe they were treating this is a show reel and are angling for a mainstream Hollywood career. If that's the case I wish them luck (because they're really gonna need it!), but otherwise I'm baffled about where they are coming from. Perhaps their constant references to Lucas and Spielberg on the DVD commentary says it all. I would say 'Reign In Darkness' is the worst Australian vampire movie of all time, but I've seen 'Bloodlust', and that, believe or not makes this look like 'The Matrix'! Even so this is one of the poorest Australia movies I've seen in many years, and is to be avoided like the plague!

Shot on video in Australia with a distinct lack of scope and talent, the biggest problem with REIGN IN DARKNESS is the script. Instead of coming up with something halfway original, it gives us a rip off of both BLADE and THE MATRIX, featuring vampires running around a city in dark clothing and taking part in gun battles and fights. The film is so slavishly derivative to everything that's come before I wonder why the filmmakers bothered – it's obvious they're not going to be able to emulate either of those Hollywood films on this kind of budget, so why even try? The annoying thing is that I'm sure they could have at least made a more watchable film had they gone for something different.

For anyone not familiar with shot-on-video epics, the problems are numerous: the acting is often wooden, the dialogue delivered in a way that would make your local amateur dramatics group cringe. This one features Australians putting on a variety of American accents. The direction is pedestrian and the fight scenes – well, they don't even register. Forget any semblance of characterisation, motivation or continuity. The special effects are negligent – not even any rubbishy CGI stuff to laugh at – and I get the impression that the filmmakers ran out of what little money they did have, as later on we get a few people chatting in a dark room for about ten minutes before the credits roll. Not the most exciting of endings, then.

At the end of the day, if you want to watch this sort of stuff you're going to go with the Hollywood films – and for good reason. I have no idea why REIGN IN DARKNESS has even received a DVD release over here, given that it has absolutely nothing going for it aside from a misleading cover that makes it look like a 'professional' flick.

I rented this expecting a mildly entertaining vampire/horror movie. The box artwork and description sure made it sound interesting. It tries to be a combination of "Blade" and "The Matrix" at once and fails miserably on both goals.

Very poorly executed in almost every possible way. It was apparently shot on the same Sony digital camera systems that Lucas used on the last Star Wars movie. But the picture on this film is only decent and looks quite fake and bright. Why they even bothered amazes me since this was obviously a very low-budget movie to begin with. The sound is also very poorly done, i could not even understand much of the dialogue throughout the movie.

Avoid even renting this waste!

Now, I make it a point to see bad movies, and stick with them right to the end. I've only turned off one film EVER - "Miracles" with Jackie Chan. But now I have to add this to that list.

This movie was horrendous. Absolutely terrible. The dialogue was unbearable, the accents unconvincing, special effects were laughable and the plot was almost non-existent. It also had a look like it was filmed exclusively using security cameras, which gave them an extra bit of annoyance as one moment you can't really see what's going on because you're too far, and then the next not seeing it because the camera is shaking like mad.

The movie follows a scientist who, while trying to cure HIV, actually is making a virus that creates vampires. The amazing thing about these new vampires apparently is their skill at making kevlar clothing and the fact that they have absolutely no physical weaknesses - invincible to everything (sunlight, bullets, knives, garlic, etc.) - except being complete idiots who like to wear leather outfits and get beaten up as an excuse to move the "plot" forward. The main character tries to get back at the people who made him what he is, and I really don't care if he actually succeeded. I assume he does, but I wish he didn't because then there wouldn't be even the possibility of this movie getting a sequel.

Watching this film, I got the feeling that the filmmakers are goths who wanted to make a movie to show how much they liked vampires and how cool they looked in black clothing and shades in daylight. And sadly, it definitely does not have a so-bad-it's-good quality like so many Troma films because the filmmakers take this seriously, which gives it a completely unwatchable film.