Dark Heaven (2002) Reviews

• This review has spoilers - technically speaking. There's really not much to spoil here...

  fedor82007-10-05

  "The end of the world is the harvest, and the angels are the reapers". Matthew 13:39. With this caption starts the movie. However, this Bible quote is taken completely out of context. Because Matthew 13:40-42 says: "What you are about to see will make 'Men In Black' seem like 'Gone With the Wind'. Have fun." An Italian-looking cop finds himself as the only man left on Earth. (Well, maybe not the last man, but certainly the last big-nosed cop.) We are instantly reminded of classics such as "Quiet Earth" and "Omega Man", except, of course, that these movies weren't made by people who normally do porn during their office hours. The cop sees that the streets are deserted - and I had to wonder at this point how the hell this low-budgety little film's director managed to shoot deserted street scenes! That stuff isn't exactly cheap or easy to film. Maybe they gassed whole neighbourhoods, dumped the sleeping inhabitants into special Z-movie containers, and then did a quick take before the real cops (the Irish-looking ones) smelled something was fishy. Anyway... Our brave cop turns out to be an atheist who used to be a believer, hence we know he must be: 1) punished for being an atheist, and 2) converted back into believing. But before this can happen, he needs to go through a series of chilling scenes that should have you trembling with horror. He meets all sorts of badly dressed demons, angels and dull men, while scenes weave into each other with elegant ease. The editing is masterful. It is sublime. It is pastiched-together with the kind of glue one gets for free in school, but the result is some damn thing to behold! These demons are just as dull as the humans he meets, but at least the humans will talk to him - even though he's a cop - which is more than can be said for the angelo-demons, the arrogant uncommunicative bastards that they are, who seem to be playing a very, very clever game of hide-and-seek with our confused cop. (Though not as confused as us viewers.) He only gets to see glimpses of them, but they disappear before he can arrest them for bad costuming. At one point our cop finds a demon getting ready to decapitate a hu-man, and guess what the cop says? "Police Officer, drop your weapon!". That's my favourite scene. Why? Because the director so cleverly shows us that the cop still has his sense of humour intact, in spite of the awful predicament he found himself in - which I think is a very powerful message to make. Telling a demon to drop his "weapon", so that he'd avoid an even bigger jail term when charges of first-degree manslaughter are brought in, also shows the cop's compassion for all the demons of this world. He doesn't like them, of course, but he would like to prevent them from ruining their mortal, brief lives with a 25-ta-life kind of prison term. After that, there's more hide-and-seek, some flashbacks with a vaguely cute blonde that both dies and loses the cop's baby at birth in a badly managed hospital with only three staff members; there are many more scenes with innovative editing, and some more demons teasing the cop to try and find them in this maze that is called "Dark Heaven". In an earlier scene, a demon-angel tells the cop "Follow me!", but the cop fails to follow him well enough, hence doesn't catch him. That was just one of many rounds that demons and angels won against the hapless cop in this bizarre game of "catch-me-if-you-can". In the end, two demon-angels fight each other over something the director forgot to tell us about. The winner in this CGI-extravaganza of a duel is - SHOCK! - not a demon but the film's priest! This soooooo came out of left field. Congrats to the writer/producer/director, One called Schulze (THE One), for including all these totally unpredictable plot-twists. However, even this twist paled in comparison with the amazingly original and TOTALLY UNEXPECTED it-was-all-just-a-dream end-scene. Schulze is a visionary, that much is certain. I'm sure every woman who sees this film (i.e. all 8 of them) will want to have his babies when they finish watching the film. Let's just hope they can give birth in a better-equipped hospital than the one in DH... On a less serious note, the movie has a great soundtrack. Like porno music mixed with New Age meditation music mixed in with an amateur black metal Norwegian Satanic cult chanting "oooooooo". The look of the movie is terrific, too: you might be reminded of home-video footage you made while drunk at your last year's family reunion. The plot is complex; in fact it is so complex that only one man on Earth - and I think we can all agree none of us would mind if he was ever to become last man on Earth - can understand the plot and that is of course the movie's brilliant creator, Schulze. The One. Have fun. (Sick and tired of Euro-trash "classics", i.e. bad, overrated dramas? E-mail me if you want to read my totally altered subtitles of Ingmar Bergman's "Autumn Sonata", "Cries & Whispers", or "Passion Of Anne", but also the non-Bergman "Der Untergang".)

• dark heaven

  daniellekira922006-04-29

  i think this movie was absolutely terrible. it sucked. especially the part when those 2 retarded angel devil things were fighting and then all of a sudden the one retarded thing got stabbed, it was so stupid. it kept people going to find out whether you should keep watching it to find out if it gets any better, but trust me it doesn't, in fact it gets more stupider. the guy in this movie kept seeing stuff and then he went to this one room, the bathroom, and he saw himself in a stall naked and the room Wu flashing everywhere and the guy was so stupid he doesn't realize there's this naked guy with some symbol on his head in a bathroom, then he tells the creepy naked guy, " come on lets go , the police are here", like what the heck is up with that. anyways this movie sucks!! don't watch it!!

• Creepy Entertainment

  thisisthepoint2004-11-02

  Dark Heaven is an excellent example of a film that entertains by taking its audience on a creepy journey. A ghost house filled with crucifixes and dark angellic beings. The goal isn't to frighten us but to unsettle you. And, it works! Douglas Schulze's use of "spiritual subject matter" was an excellent choice through which to tell his modern day "creepfest". Why? Because it is still relatively unexplored territoryo. Sure you have "The Exorcist", "The Omen" and a few rather silly evangelical flicks like "Left Behind" but these films tend to emphasize demonic possession a topic that has become very cliché. DARK HEAVEN follows a man who has lost his spiritual faith (nothing cinematic ally new there) but it's the story that follows that is so compelling and interesting - no apparent demonic possession here. A man who is a "good man" but has come to question his faith. Much like that old short story "YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN" (check it out, you'll get many of your answers there). I don't think that this film was ever meant to be "The Omen". I think that it is exactly what it set out to be, "creepy entertainment". Obviously the film has/is succeeding. I have read that a DARK HEAVEN 2 is coming and am eager to see it. Bravo filmmaker Douglas Schulze. I GET THE POINT AND I WAS ENTERTAINED.

• Missed Opportunity

  OmegaGate2005-04-14

  The movie is one missed opportunity after another, you get no sense of the characters because the whole movie just constantly jumps one scene after another w/o any regard to good editing and the acting itself would be good if this was a porno. The whole movie is about dead ends, stating the obvious and what will end first, the movie or your patience with it. Even the worst movies have that one part that is decent and this one has one as well, but nobody goes to see a movie for the hope of that one good part, so if it is on TV and you have nothing better to do go ahead and watch it, but, past that you are not missing anything.

• Crapfest

  lucki6152007-01-06

  I realize people have different taste and different opinions on many subjects, but to actually find more than two people who liked this film (if you can call it that)and would admit to it by writing a positive review is disheartening to say the least. I picked up this film solely on the recommendation of a co-worker Starky. She told me how wonderful and creepy this movie was and I took a chance. After watching the movie a good year or so ago, I'd rather be stuck watching all 13 episodes of Cop Rock. Nothing and let me underline NOTHING in this movie made sense. I don't know if they were trying to follow the style of Jacob's Ladder with dream sequences or what, but it didn't work. The costumes were horrible and I swear it looked like these Angels had plastic swords and I remember some deal with a floating balloon, that again, MADE NO SENSE! I've read how some people picked this movie up solely based on the cover art of the DVD box, which at first I found ridiculous, but ever since I picked up the movie Rest Stop, I can no longer laugh. I picked up that movie based on the cover on the box and thinking I had missed a good horror movie at the theater that finally made it to DVD. How wrong I was on that one also. Both movies are bad, the writing is terrible, the acting is terrible, the character's actions make no sense and you just sit her wondering how they get any money at all to make this kind of crap!