User Reviews

So they understand English....except when they don't. They are wild...except when they need modern medicine. They need a live sacrifice...unless you're useful. This infuriated me. Needless dog killing. And why didn't the whole town get weapons and get them all?! And that BS ENDING!!! This is beyond crazy and imbecilic.

The early clues coupled with the DVD cover made the film very predictable as one might guess it is Thomas Tryon plus Troglodytes. A doctor (Sean Patrick Thomas) and his family move into the small, quaint, quirky community of Ashborough NH. The town has Isolates, an indigenous group that missed the early American genocide. They prove to be beyond annoying in a story that made as much sense as a Thomas Tryon novel with Troglodytes. The movie had a made-for-TV feel to it.

Dr. Michael Coyle (a solid and credible performance by Sean Patrick Thomas) leaves the hustle and bustle of New York City by moving his practice and family to the quiet and remote country hamlet of Ashborough. However, Ashborough turns out to be run by a lethal race of ghastly underground-dwelling mutants.

Director Colin Theys relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, takes time to develop the main characters, delivers a few bits of nasty gore, and ably crafts an eerie and unsettling mood along with a strong isolated small town atmosphere. John Doolan's compelling script not only provides a starling surprise grim ending, but also offers a novel spin on the monster horror genre by making the hideous humanoid beasts sickly beings who need the protagonist's medical expertise to keep them alive. The sound acting by the capable cast rates as another substantial asset: Kristen Bush brings a winning blend of charm and spark to her role as Michael's perky wife Christine, Dean Stockwell contributes fine support as amiable old-timer Phil Deighton, and Blanch Baker does well as the sinister Zellis. The subterranean creatures are genuinely creepy. Both Matthew Lewellyn's shivery score and the sharp widescreen cinematography by Claudio Rietti and Adrian Peng Correia are up to speed. Worth a watch.

Definitely spoiler alert.

Good horror/monster pictures are few and far between. While "Deep in the Darkness" does have its own share of problems, it's definitely one of the good ones as judged by the relative standards of its own class of movie. I would encourage devotees of the genre, willing to engage in an enthusiastic "willing suspension of disbelief" (a prerequisite for the genre), to give this movie a tumble. People with a lot of convicted, film-student notions about what constitutes high-art cinema would be best advised to look elsewhere.

Stylistically, the movie has echoes of "Harvest Home" and "Wicker Man" with its depiction of something unhealthy just beneath the surface of a closely-knit small-town community and the progressive isolating of the masculine lead, leaving him an outsider even within the context of his own small family.

Be warned: the wife of the protagonist appears to blow hot and cold in her relationship with her husband as the movie progresses. This reads as out of place or inconsistent and gives one the sense of a poorly-crafted plot element. At the very end of the picture we see it's actually a fairly legitimate expression of someone vacillating between loyalties.

Within the context of its own genre, if I had any significant criticisms to level at this movie it would be with the nature of the ending. All of the questions about how we got here, what's going on here, and so on, are neatly tied up. But the movie does not seem to carry all of the way to a final conclusion. It's as if it quit about 10 minutes before a final resolution. There is a definite "-and where does he go from here…?" sort of feeling at credit-roll that was unfortunate. The movie makes the stylistic choice to end on an explanatory note that gives our hero an opportunity to understand clearly how he ended up in this situation that explains much of his wife's peculiar actions during the course of the film, but there are still a few issues he needs to resolve and the movie just stops. He's put up an effective and determine fight throughout the film and he's unlikely to stop at this point, and so neither should the picture.

Some examples of questions that could use answering are: 1. The hero has apparently wiped out the entire nest of monsters except perhaps for one newborn infant monster and a couple of half- monster-half- humans. Why is he still isolated? Hasn't he won? 2. The community has apparently run off with his half-breed wife and his kid. It's a very small community. How far do they think they can go? And why is the community still helping the monsters? 3. Unlike "Harvest Home" and "Wicker Man", our hero has been left alive, healthy, and kicking at the end of the picture. Yet some of the townspeople appear to be trying to help the monsters along, and not just the half-breed townspeople. Clearly our hero is going to persist in creating a problem; why was he left alive?

And so on. The list is long.

Who knows? Maybe these questions have been saved for "Deep in the Darkness 2".