WITHIN THE DARKNESS * USA 2016 Dir: Jonathan Zuck 84 mins
For all those who haven’t yet had enough of no-budget horror movies based around a phoney paranormal TV show…here’s another one, complete with obnoxious characters wandering around darkened rooms shouting “What the fuck was that?”
This lifeless, heavily padded bore unfolds in a house with a murder-suicide history, where the appropriately smug, sleazy host of “Ghost Spotters” has holed up with an eye-candy “occult specialist”, a Gothed-up medium and a bag of tricks (creepy doll, fishing wire) to stage some scares. Dopey fake scares dominate the movie, even at the point where it really should be delivering the real thing, and characters look like a low-rent take on The Joker when possessed. A double twist ending negates the whole thing, making it resemble a shaggy dog Children’s Foundation horror film from the 1970’s. Gratuitous nudity can’t save it and the use of CG is predictably lame.
Review by Steven West