Darkroom (2013) Reviews

• Biggest waste of time I've ever seen

  fujikid2013-07-13

  I rented this today based on the 7.8 score it was showing here. A few hours later and I felt compelled to join IMDb and try to correct the status by making my first ever comment in the vague hope I can save a few people a couple of hours of their time. This is without any doubt one of worst movies I've ever seen. The characters are completely flat, the acting appalling and the story is simply non-existent. I know this can often be the case in low budget horror movies, even some that have become cult classics, but when you add ... ... it's not in the least bit frightening ... there is zero suspense ... there's nothing to make you jump ... and there's not even much blood for the gore fans. It fails to press a single button. There's not even enough here to achieve the so bad it's entertaining moniker.

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• Darkroom: Just plain bad

  Platypuschow2018-01-04

  Telling the story of a girl in a rehab centre who is offered a job that turns out to be her kidnapping and torture from religious zealots. Though the films production values are decent, the quality of the writing cannot be accused of the same. Messy generic plot that is as interesting as a 3 week old banana peel, instantly forgettable stuff. Elisabeth Rohm stars and I can't figure out for the life of me why, she is so above this tosh. With not a redeeming feature to its name Darkroom is not what I expected at all and sadly not something worth acknowledging again. The Good: Production values are decent Elisabeth Rohm The Bad: Incredibly dull No originality Predictible Things I Learnt From This Movie: With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion

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• Simply amazing! Fails to even be compelling torture porn

  bob_meg2013-11-10

  It's hard to relay how effectively this film delivers absolutely nothing of value. I know...all you have to do is check out the posters and read the synopsis to know we're not shooting for a film brimming with deep, meaningful artistic content. But seriously? Darkroom starts up with a mildly interesting premise, even though it is duct-taped onto the very well-worn "lure the pretty girl into danger" trope. Kaylee Defer (in all fairness, delivering an OK performance given the material) plays Michelle, a girl who's doing time in a juvenile facility after killing three of her friends in a drunk driving accident. DeFer plays these opening scenes with a nice air of shell shock. At least there seems to be something inside herself that she's trying to effectively relay. She's lured to a sprawling mansion that's far too awesome to be in the company of these filmmakers --- it lends a very creepy, imposing atmosphere. One would think that the people residing in this house would be fairly interesting. They obviously would have some style, some flash, some character --- even if it were dark and twisted. Well, here's where Michaelbrent Collings script really drops the ball. The three antagonists, when not cribbing straight from the abused family-of-wackjobs movie handbook (bullying older male sib, domineering female sib, bullied and repressed younger male sib) come across as nothing more than common thugs who like to play with power tools. They're supposedly right-wing Christian extremists, but they act and talk like white trash hillbillies. Their methods are not scary, creepy, or menacing. They're just brutal and disgusting. And boring, unless a trip to Home Depot sends you into a full-tilt panic attack. Yes, I'm sure it's terrifying in real life to be attacked with a power drill or a hack saw. Not so much on the screen, especially when you could care less if any of these people survive. Darkroom is like an anti-Hostel. You can argue that both films depict the same thing, and rightfully so. What Eli Roth brought to the table in those films, though, were characters and situations that drew you into watching...and caring. Characters had quirks, eccentricities, and nuances that at least made them memorable...especially the villains. Darkroom has *none* of these things. It's bad guys are nothing but stiff, blank-slated cyphers. And not in a creep-out amoral Michael Myers way, either. So why does one write a film such as this? Had to be the cash, I guess. Which I must admit irritates me. It completely degrades the work of everyone on a project this size. Any possible reason beyond spilled CGI gore has been ripped off from thousands of other, better horror films (abusive families beget abuse, wow -- how deep). Inexplicably, the film ends with a home movie of the torturers as children, happy as all get-out, playing on the front lawn of the mansion. Not sure how the writer thought we would actually care about these cardboard cut-outs. The shot is as mystifying as why Phase 4 (a normally very discriminating distributor) would release this pile of gutless garbage.

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• Awful

  claudio_carvalho2014-07-14

  After a deadly car accident with three victims, the traumatized Michelle (Kaylee DeFer) is sent to a group therapy with Rachel (Elisabeth Röhm). She recovers from the trauma and Rachel recommends that Michelle needs to work to prove that is healed. Rachel gives a card with a job opportunity at the company called "Darkroom Inc.". Michelle arrives at a mansion and is hired, but soon she discovers that she is trapped inside the house with other girls and three deranged and sadistic siblings that intend to purge her from her sins. "Darkroom" is an awful torture movie with a messy non-linear screenplay and one-dimensional characters. Unfortunately I glanced at the bad reviews (100%) but I decided to give a chance to "Darkroom" and watch this terrible film. My vote is two. Title (Brazil): "Casa do Medo" ("Fear House")

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• A darkroom is not that bright

  movieman_kev2014-01-05

  Michelle (Kaylee DeFer) finds herself trapped in a rather foreboding, dimly lit mansion terrorized by a sinister family after taking a job recommendation (the last you'll the word recommendation in regards to this boring little film, by the way, but I digress) A majority of the film is told in flashbacks, meandering, badly acted,excruciatingly dull flashbacks. I suspect to pad the rather thin material that the movie does possess. So what we have is what could've been a passable short film (that's being extremely generous) stretched out to a dreary, sleep-inducing sub-par saw-ripoff feature film. I hesitate to give this film a 1 because I have seen worse, but not by much.

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