Beneath the Darkness Review

It really comes as no real surprise that many major actors let slip in interviews that want to play a villain, and the appeal is easy to see. The bad guys traditionally get all the best lines and are the grittier characters for an esteemed actor to get their teeth into. Whilst the goody goody tends to be the hero, they also seem to be cliched and somewhat less believable than the bad guy.

Albert Brooks was finally given his chance in ‘Drive’, and succeeded in playing the bad guy beyond all expectations, and won guild awards in both LA and New York. Now it is the turn of Dennis Quaid to try his hand at being a psycho but this, sadly, does not fare as well as Brooks did.

His intentionally scary performance is actually comedic it is so over the top, and this is just one of the problems with “Beneath The Darkness”, penned by Bruce Wilkinson, as this film just doesn’t know whether it is a psychological thriller or a comedy. It is obviously intended to be the former, but nobody seems to have born that in mind before it hit the big screen.

Jack Nicholson pulled off the part in the Shining thanks to both his performance and appearance, the healthy looking Quaid with his ruddy complexion just doesn’t look the part. Directed by Argentinian Martin Guigui, and with terribly choppy editing courtesy of Eric Potter who seems to revel  in cutting scenes short just as they get interesting, “Beneath The Darkness” is typical horror shtick.

We have a band of idiotic kids in high school, played by thesps in their twenties, who are begging to die by exposing themselve to ridiculously dangerous situations. Filmed on location in Smithville, Texas,  the high school buddies Travis, Brian and Danny are curious about what is going in the house of the towns mortician Vaughan Ely (Quaid).

Peeking through the blinds they see Ely dancing with his wife, the only problem with this scenario is that the good Mrs Ely has been dead for 2 years. It’s instantly apparent that everyone thinks Ely killed her and he is suspected  of killing two other since, as well as supposedly burying his dead wifes’ alleged lover alive.

The intrepid foursome decide to, like you do, break in when Ely is out, but of course he returns and they are trapped, and even though he knows these kids he is, obviously, none too pleased and adds one of them to his ever increasing list of murders. Sgt. Nickerson is the town cop and doesn’t believe them, so the surviving 3 set about getting the evidence they need to get Ely locked up, whether it be in prison or the loony bin.

Some of the most unintentionally funny lines come when Travis makes his statement, and determined to add his own name to Ely’s list, yells at his that he’s a psycho. The final monologue from Quaid is clearly intended to put him in the same neighbourhood as the Shining, but it doesn’t come off as he simply looks too damned uncomfortable. Let’s hope from now on he goes back to doing what he does best, saving the world.

The best thing about this film are the crows scenes, and more should have been made of them. Texas is renowned for their great high school bands, and we are treated the actual musicians from Smithville as well as seeing a local parade. As for the rest of the film, forget it.