Dark Corners starts as young successful woman Susan Hamilton (Thora Birch) & her husband David (Christien Anholt) are trying to conceive a baby through IVF treatment, however lately Susan has been suffering from very vivid & terrifying nightmares in which she sees an alter ego of herself named Karen Clarke (Thora Birch) have some horrible experiences. Also at this time the area where Susan lives is being terrorised by a serial killer known as the 'Nightstalker'. The nightmares become worse & Susan seeks the help of psychoanalyst Dr. Woodleigh (Toby Stephens) who hypnotises her & 'kills' Karen off in her nightmare which he believes will stop them. Then the Nightstalker strikes close to home & kills one of Susan's friends & the nightmares return, but what do they mean & why are they so lifelike?
This American British co-production was written & directed by Ray Gower & is one of the biggest wastes of 90 odd minutes I can remember seeing, sure there are worse films out there but for sheer frustration & annoyance Dark Corner is hard to beat. I suppose Dark Corners aims to be a dark psychological thriller with horror overtones that is meant to keep you guessing right up to the end & to be fair the first fifteen or twenty minutes were good & I liked what I was seeing. The way when Susan went to sleep in her world Karen would wake up in her & when Karen went to sleep or got knocked out Susan would then re-awake was quite cool & it got to a point I wasn't sure which reality was real & which was the dreamworld or whether both were real or what was going on. Unfortunately Dark Corners carries on in this exact same fashion for 85 minutes, Susan sleeps, Karen wakes, Karen sleeps & Susan wakes. Talk about repetitive & it get really boring as the film just goes round in circles with meaningless imagery, dialogue & a plot that never seems to advance. Then the big so-called twist ending comes & everything that has gone before is thrown out of the window in an ending that makes zero sense to me, there are plenty of long posts on the IMDb about the meaning of this twist but what it comes down to is people just trying to make something out of nothing. For every answer you might have there will be at least another couple of questions that arise, nothing makes sense or has any logic to it & I hated it. Dark Corners is slow & it's an absolute mess that one presumes director Gower wanted to say something profound & meaningful but things got out of control & he couldn't tie it all together. Sure no-one needs to be spoon fed the answers but give us pieces of the puzzle that actually fit together rather than this boring mess of ideas. Still, when all said & done who gives a damn what this crap film is about the main question I want answered though is why did that old woman tell Susan not to sit in that chair in the corner of Woodleigh's waiting room?
The sole reason I am giving Dark Corners two stars out of ten rather than one is because it does actually look quite nice, Susan perfect brightly lit world contrasts well against Karens bleak dark & grungy one. It's easy to know which reality the film is currently in because of the two colour schemes. In the making-of featurette director Gower apparently says this is 'David Lynch meets Cronenberg meets Wes Craven', yeah right. There's all sorts of imagery that really has little to do with anything, a blind detective to killers who wear hoodies to weird kids randomly pointing at Karen. None of it comes across as anything other than pretentious & just strange for no real reason. There's some gore, there's a dead body with it's guts hanging out, there's a slit throat, a ripped out baby fetus & some blood splatter. There are one or two well composed & shot scenes that are almost creepy but not enough.
Although set in the US this was filmed over here in England, the film does look nice with good production values & effects. The acting is pretty poor from most, Thora Birch is hot in both roles but that's the best I can say for her.
Dark Corners is a film that feels like it's supposed to be full of messages, striking images & a knock out twist, unfortunately it's a complete total & utter mess that fails on every count. The first fifteen or twenty minutes are alright but once the repetitiveness & boredom kicks in I can see most losing interest very quickly.
This American British co-production was written & directed by Ray Gower & is one of the biggest wastes of 90 odd minutes I can remember seeing, sure there are worse films out there but for sheer frustration & annoyance Dark Corner is hard to beat. I suppose Dark Corners aims to be a dark psychological thriller with horror overtones that is meant to keep you guessing right up to the end & to be fair the first fifteen or twenty minutes were good & I liked what I was seeing. The way when Susan went to sleep in her world Karen would wake up in her & when Karen went to sleep or got knocked out Susan would then re-awake was quite cool & it got to a point I wasn't sure which reality was real & which was the dreamworld or whether both were real or what was going on. Unfortunately Dark Corners carries on in this exact same fashion for 85 minutes, Susan sleeps, Karen wakes, Karen sleeps & Susan wakes. Talk about repetitive & it get really boring as the film just goes round in circles with meaningless imagery, dialogue & a plot that never seems to advance. Then the big so-called twist ending comes & everything that has gone before is thrown out of the window in an ending that makes zero sense to me, there are plenty of long posts on the IMDb about the meaning of this twist but what it comes down to is people just trying to make something out of nothing. For every answer you might have there will be at least another couple of questions that arise, nothing makes sense or has any logic to it & I hated it. Dark Corners is slow & it's an absolute mess that one presumes director Gower wanted to say something profound & meaningful but things got out of control & he couldn't tie it all together. Sure no-one needs to be spoon fed the answers but give us pieces of the puzzle that actually fit together rather than this boring mess of ideas. Still, when all said & done who gives a damn what this crap film is about the main question I want answered though is why did that old woman tell Susan not to sit in that chair in the corner of Woodleigh's waiting room?
The sole reason I am giving Dark Corners two stars out of ten rather than one is because it does actually look quite nice, Susan perfect brightly lit world contrasts well against Karens bleak dark & grungy one. It's easy to know which reality the film is currently in because of the two colour schemes. In the making-of featurette director Gower apparently says this is 'David Lynch meets Cronenberg meets Wes Craven', yeah right. There's all sorts of imagery that really has little to do with anything, a blind detective to killers who wear hoodies to weird kids randomly pointing at Karen. None of it comes across as anything other than pretentious & just strange for no real reason. There's some gore, there's a dead body with it's guts hanging out, there's a slit throat, a ripped out baby fetus & some blood splatter. There are one or two well composed & shot scenes that are almost creepy but not enough.
Although set in the US this was filmed over here in England, the film does look nice with good production values & effects. The acting is pretty poor from most, Thora Birch is hot in both roles but that's the best I can say for her.
Dark Corners is a film that feels like it's supposed to be full of messages, striking images & a knock out twist, unfortunately it's a complete total & utter mess that fails on every count. The first fifteen or twenty minutes are alright but once the repetitiveness & boredom kicks in I can see most losing interest very quickly.