Left in Darkness

By minimal I mean there aren't all that many characters to get to know, and there also are not all that many sets...so basically a horror movie with a very limited potential for kills. Still I thought it was done rather well, could have been better, but then again most horror movies could would have and should have been better. This one has a very pretty girl with a number of tragedies that have marked her life. Her mother died when she was born, her grandfather died the prior year she just wants to have fun on her birthday for once. Well she goes with a friend to a wild frat party, which is mistake number one and her friend hooks her up with an obvious scumbag. Why do gals prefer this scum who would do what he does to a guy like me I will never know, but that is just the facts. This guy precedes to take her to the basement and gets her to tell her sad story and after she passes out from the drug in her drink rapes her. Great guy, eh? Well the drug in the drink kills the girl and is the movie over...no! It has just begun as the girl must now try to figure out the afterlife as her grandfather is there, but he seemingly wishes to do her harm and also there is her guardian angel who tries to explain things to her, but he also seems kind of menacing as well. There are flashes of others in her life, things looking for her soul and she also has the ability to look back on the life she left behind and see the party still going on. Like I said not bad, just needed more, the girl is really pretty and she does a nice job. I could have used a couple of more venues as I get really tired of the frat house. From the back of the box I was actually expecting more of a darker version of an earlier film I enjoyed "Highway to Hell", still there are worse ways to spend one's time.

Left in Darkness wasn't actually all that bad of a film. The description on the back left me very wary of what I was about to watch. The beginning was rather odd with the star as a little girl whose deafness to her grandfathers recommendations didn't bode well for a long life. The dreaded rape scene wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, considering what some twisted directors have done with the subject. The story is about a woman who is raised by her grandparents after her mother dies giving birth and father disappears. She is killed at an animal house type of party by the typical drunken sociopath frat boys. She wakes up dead between heaven and hell and must fight for her soul using vague clues given to her by dead relatives and a guardian angel of sorts. It moves relatively quickly and has some good horror scenes. The editing was good and the camera work was good. The dialog was a little flat. The acting wasn't too bad and there were some seasoned actors in bit parts.

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 really liked this movie, although I initially didn't expect it to be much good. Overall it was a really nice afterlife flick.

If you're a Christian you might be disappointed, because how you led your life obviously doesn't matter all too much in this version of the "purgatory". Also, "hell" doesn't try to tempt you into going there, being shown blatantly for what it is. That left aside the film actually manages to provide some likable characters. The acting isn't the best of the best, but I've seen much much ... much worse. There is much talk in this film and close to no gore. Still it manages to not get boring. I found the plot easy to follow and the rules of the afterlife simple to understand. There aren't too many rules anyway, if you turn your brains on it comes down to two or three, although they get reiterated from time to time.

If you've got a movie night coming up with some friends that don't like gore but still want to have something that would count as a horror movie, this one isn't a bad choice at all.

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?