Left in Darkness (2006)

Posted on Jan 24, 2007 under Horror |

Directed by Steven R. Monroe
Written by Philip Daay and Jane Whitney
Starring
- Monica Keena
- David Anders
- Chris Engen
- Tim Thomerson
- Jessica Stroup
Produced by Stephen J. Cannell and Michael J. Dubelko

Those of you who can remember, cast your minds back with me to the Golden Age of VHS rental. (And you young whippersnappers who can’t remember when videos only came on tape, hush up and let your elders reminisce about the glory days.) It was an age of gaudy hucksterism; the video rental business was, after all, an outgrowth of ShowBiz. And those of us who trolled the rental racks looking for new and exciting unknown titles soon learned a rule of thumb: in general, the more tricked-out the rental box was, the poorer the movie inside would turn out to be. It wasn’t a hard and fast law of nature; some few movies with snazzy boxes almost lived up to them (I’m thinking of The Dead Pit (1989), whose embossed cover with flashing zombie eyes contained an enjoyable little living dead flick; the talking box for Frankenhooker (1990) wasn’t a dealbreaker either). But by and large, any cover with embossed art or flashing lights or 3-D graphics or prismatic foil effects was trying desperately to compensate for deficiencies within.

I mention this because there is a special edition DVD box available for Left in Darkness, the subject of this review, with a glow-in-the-dark sleeve. And really, I could just let the whole review go at that.

But no! No, you’d miss my scintillating wit and exhaustive commentary if I cut things short with a mere backhanded aside, and then you wouldn’t click on any of my GoogleAds. And the people responsible for the movie would get off far too easy.

“Kappa Beta Nookie.”

I should make clear at the outset that, like most of the features made specifically to be released as DVD premieres by Anchor Bay, it’s a very professional production on a moderate budget. Director Steven R. Moore comes to the director’s chair from a career as a camera operator, and thus turns out a finished product with a very intentional look, with tricks of focus and lighting and editing standing in for special effects. And of course producer Stephen J. Cannell is a thirty-plus year veteran of television production. So between them, you know that the feature will end up looking very good for its budget.

Which means that, as usual, the problems all reside with story elements: unsympathetic characters, pointless dialogue, and a plot thru-line which ends up being no more than “running from place to place” as arbitrary deadlines loom. I won’t go so far as to blame screenwriters Philip Daay and Jane Whitney, because that would be to place the blame with those who have no authority over their actions, as the director and various producers all would have their hands in making the final mish-mash of a script. I think it a telling detail that the making-of featurette has face-time with the director, the producers, cast members, composer, production designer, editor… but the writers are never in evidence, nor are they even mentioned by name. It comes as no surprise, then, that the finished movie shows very clearly that story was the last priority among this team of professionals who at some level consider themselves professional storytellers. In other words, it fails because the point of making the movie got lost in the course of the production.

Our main character is Celia (Monica Keena), a girl with more baggage than the LAX. Her mother died giving birth to her, and her father ran off soon thereafter, so Celia was raised by her Grandpa Joe (Tim Thomerson). Her birthdays were an ordeal, as Grandpa insisted that they visit Mom’s grave every year on that day. Celia also grew up with an “imaginary friend” named Donovan, who more than once rescued her from childhood peril.

It’s now Celia’s 21st birthday, and her first one without the graveside ritual; Grandpa Joe has himself died in the last year. So to celebrate her emancipation, she decides to spend the big 2-1 with her best friend Justine (Jessica Stroup) to a big frat party. Because nothing says “I’m legal now!” like spending the evening puking and getting groped.

“And the worst part is, all the clothes I gave to Goodwill met me on the other side.”

That alone would have been bad enough. But Justine’s paramour introduces Celia to Doug (Chris Engen), a fine-looking and well-behaved fellow — in other words, the kind who probably shouldn’t have to resort to slipping drugs into girls’ drinks. But he does, and she succumbs to his pharmacological skills. She almost achieves consciousness while being gang-raped, but then the drugs prove to be too powerful, and she wakes up dead.

No, really, she does. She awakens, blue-lipped, in a locked basement bathroom with her pants around her ankles, and once she shakily gets to her feet, she looks back — and still sees her glassy-eyed corpse lying there.

Now, I want to be clear: My derisive and flippant comments through the rest of this review are in no way to be interpreted as making light of date rape. The most emotionally powerful scenes in the movie take place in this first twenty minutes, as Celia’s trust is exploited, and she is left brutalized. In fact, it is this movie which makes light of the assault, by saying, in effect, “Drugged rape was just the beginning — then all this confusing and silly stuff happens to her!”

On the other hand, if anything drains some of our sympathy for Celia, it’s her determination to stand in harm’s way, even when she receives clear warnings. At one point, she walks through a room in which a Ouija Board is being used; the board immediately spells out, “GOHOMECELIA.” Then twice, she hears a disembodied voice telling her to go home. So while the enormity of the crime isn’t lessened, nobody can claim that Celia had no inkling that she was in danger.

“Of course it looks cheap. Heaven’s a thrifty place, you know.”

Anyway: She’s dead now, though naturally in denial, and here’s where things start getting both weird and slipshod. The frat house, as she stumbles out of the bathroom, is dead quiet and empty, bathed in a washed-out light. Then she starts seeing people in the mirrors, as if the party were still going on in a reality next-door to hers. She finally finds a familiar face: Grandpa Joe! Not that she wants to accept that she’s dead, but there’s no one she’d rather be dead with. Except that it isn’t really Grandpa Joe; it’s Zombie Grandpa Joe! He’s a creature that chases her outside and back inside, mostly to demonstrate that twenty-something girls in hip-hugger jeans look really goofy when they run. A voice directs her back inside the frat house, where she finally meets her “imaginary friend” cum “spirit guide,” Donovan (David Anders of TV’s Alias), who spews phenomenal amounts of exposition: she’s dead (yes, we’ve got that), the thing in Grandpa’s form is a “soul-eater,” the white light in the frat house denotes her “sanctuary,” and that it will begin fading little by little if she stays there. She needs to find her way to the good half of the afterlife before the Soul-Eaters can get to her and drag her to the bad half.

Thanks to the arbitrary deadline of the fading sanctuary, Celia has about two hours until there’s no safety left there for her. It’s two hours that she proceeds to waste in running from place to place. Why? Um, for very little good reason. Donovan spouts a bunch of “rules” by which the netherworld runs, though not a one of them seems valid from scene to scene — little things like beings needing to be invited into her sanctuary before they can enter, or invited to touch her her before they can. Donovan seems intent on directing her to a doorway in the basement — the doorway to the very room in which she was drugged, in fact — which gives off an evil vibe to Celia. The lights go off in room after room as her circle of santuary gets smaller, the Soul-Eaters take the forms of people Celia has known to convince her to come to them, and she almost constantly has visions of herself on the seashore with a variety of passed-on family members who seem at cross purposes. In between, Celia gets to see the bastard who raped her commit suicide, and tries to find some way to keep Justine from succumbing to the same drugged treatment that did her in.

“Welcome to southern California. A place like this runs in the high $300,000s.”

Oh, and she whines. And whimpers. And pouts. Again, not to make light of her ordeal, but Celia simply doesn’t make a good protagonist. Things happen to her; her only non-passive actions usually amount to ignoring advice from Donovan for no good reason (except, of course, that youth these days are independent and self-directed and such) and to no good end. Which means that for half of the movie, most of Donovan’s non-expositive dialogue amounts to reiterations of, “You really shouldn’t have done that,” and “How about you listen to me this time.”

By the end, of course, as the arbitrary time limit winds down and the equally arbitrary sanctuary light goes out in room after room, there are “stunning” revelations about who’s really working with whom. In other words, this netherworld turns out to be even LESS consistent than our initial impression of it, which was “Designed by Congressional committee in partnership with a herd of lemmings.” Worse, the story runs out ten minutes before the movie ends, so some additional tasks and hurdles are tacked on to the end before Celia can finally go on to her eternal reward, and we are bestowed the blessed surcease of the closing credits.

The actors’ performances are about as good as could be expected, given the illogical lines and actions they are called upon to perform: Monica Keena as Celia gives a good impression of “quivering Jell-O with constantly erect nipples”; David Anders portrays Donovan as a reserved and ambiguous hard-ass with far too much patience. Tim Thomerson gets the shortest stray, alternating between stilted “loving” lines of dialogue and a snarling oatmeal-faced zombie shuffle.

**If you thought I could avoid even a passing Trancers reference, you gave me too much credit.**

Actually, worst served is the concept of an afterlife itself, which is both legalistic and inconsistent, a place where the last energies of life end up being exhausted in pointless wheel-spinning. If I were Lord of the Underworld, I’d sue for defamation.