Beneath the Darkness Blu-ray offers solid video and decent audio, but overall it's a disappointing Blu-ray release
After watching their best friend get murdered, a group of teens struggle to expose a local hero as the vicious killer and keep from becoming his next victims.
I'm a devoted fan of Dennis Quaid, which makes it painful to have nothing good to say about his
film Beneath the Darkness. But no amount of viewer indulgence or critical exertion can salvage
this dull, derivative attempt to meld small-town gothic horror with a teen scream fest. The script
is a melange of cliches, leftovers and loose ends; the direction is plodding and without suspense;
and the actors seem lost within the frame. Even Quaid, who could certainly make an effective
villain in the right vehicle, fails to generate the requisite terror, because the entire setup is
ludicrous—a point the film appears to concede when, in the final scene, Quaid's character breaks
the fourth wall and delivers a throwaway punchline that veers dangerously close to Scary Movie
terrain.
Vernon Ely (Quaid) is the local undertaker in Smithville, Texas. A creepy undertaker? How
original! Indeed, in his spare time, Mr. Ely likes to bury people alive. This isn't a spoiler, because
Mr. Ely does this in the film's opening sequence. The victim is one Jack (Timothy Fall), who
was having an affair with Ely's late wife, Rosemary (Amber Bartlett). Note that I said "late".
Care to guess whether the cause of death was natural? Ely maintains a convincing veneer of
normalcy and wonderful relations with the local police, because in his younger years he was a
star quarterback at the local high school and everyone remembers the glory days.
Two years after Jack's disappearance, we're in the classroom of the missing man's wife, Ms.
Moore (Dahlia Waingort), where we meet the film's four teenage victims, er, characters. The
current star quarterback, Brian (Stephen Lunsford), is the essence of all-American. No signs of a
future psychopath here. Then again, his girlfriend, Abby (Aimee Teagarden), already seems to
have a wandering eye. She's falling for the "sensitive" guy, Travis (Tony Oller). We know he's
sensitive, because he won't play sports, despite repeated urging by a coach (David Christopher),
who's more than a little sinister (red herring alert—oh never mind). Also, Travis is willing to act
out a scene from Shakespeare in front of the class opposite Abby, which her boyfriend wouldn't
be caught dead doing. The fourth member of the quartet is Danny (Devon Werkheiser), who just
wants to get along with everyone and have fun. This virtually guarantees that he's a dead
man.
Mr. Ely never gets an explanatory backstory, which is probably a good thing, because Travis
does, and it makes no sense. When he was a kid, his sister died, and Travis witnessed a ghostly
apparition that left him traumatized. Though the film returns to this episode repeatedly for
explanation, each time it makes less sense. And like Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about
that.
Travis has a job mowing Mr. Ely's lawn, which is enough of an excuse for the teens to spy on
Ely and then, when they see something odd, break into his home, where they really see
something odd. One of them ends up dead in what the police believe is an accident, but the other
three know is a cold-blooded murder, and they spend the rest of the film trying to prove it. But
the director, Martin Guigui, gets so bogged down in the sheer logistics of moving the kids around
town from one location to another—then another and another—that all the tension goes out of
the film. By the time that graves are being dug and premature burials threatened, you no longer
care and you just want it to end.
Quaid does the best he can to make Ely frightful, but every time the story leaves him to run after
the teens, it deflates. Unlike the murder that opens the film, which was a crime of jealousy and
revenge, Ely's cruelty toward the kids has no obvious motivation. If his initial goal was to terrify
them into silence, his failure to achieve it leaves him with no option except to eliminate them.
Instead of doing so simply and efficiently, he drags it out like a gloating Bond villain—and
botches the job. It's hard to remain scared of a screen villain who behaves with such obvious
stupidity.
Cinematographer Massimo Zeri (who is currently reported to be working on a sequel to Raging
Bull with director Guigui, if you can believe it) seems to have taken the film's title literally.
Much of the action occurs at night, and many such scenes are literally layered in shades of
black and gray. The Blu-ray's 1080p, AVC-encoded image handles this remarkably well, with essential
detail always remaining visible. What crushing there is appears to be intentional (the film was
finished on a digital intermediate). Colors in daytime scenes are decently saturated, but they're
frequently muted and autumnal. Zeri saves his more distinctive colors for certain places in Ely's
house (you'll know them when you see them) and for surreal locales like the insides of coffins.
High frequency filtering and artificial sharpening were not in evidence, nor were there any
compression artifacts.
The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track doesn't contain any sonic "gotcha" moments, because the story
doesn't provide opportunities for any. Beneath the Darkness was obviously aiming, however
unsuccessfully, for atmosphere rather than shock, and for that it relies heavily on the score by
Geoff Zanelli (Disturbia). It's a good score, and the track does it proud, filling the
listening space from all sides with ominous notes. But a score can only do so much without a decent
movie to accompany it. (I don't know whether it was the presence of a mortician as the villain, but I
could swear I caught echoes of Phantasm.) Dialogue was clear enough. If only it had been worth
hearing . . .
Behind the Scenes (HD, 1080i; 1.78:1; 2:38): Exactly as titled, this brief
featurette collects short clips of what happened between "action!" and "cut!", seen from a crew
member's perspective.
Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 1:53): One might say that the trailer gives away the
movie, if there were anything to give away.
Beneath the Darkness is dedicated to its screenwriter and executive producer, Bruce Wilkinson,
who passed away at age 60 shortly after filming was completed. According to his obituary,
Wilkinson, a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, was a rancher and attorney for whom making this
film was the realization of a life-long dream. Given that sad history, I very much wish I could
recommend the film, but I can't. It just doesn't work. Rent if you must.
Blu-ray.com and Image Entertainment are offering three Blu-ray.com members the opportunity to win a copy of director Martin Guigui's Beneath the Darkness, starring Dennis Quaid, Tony Oller and Aimee Teegarden. The film arrives on February 28th.
Next month, Image Entertainment will bring Beneath the Darkness to Blu-ray. Starring Dennis Quaid (Any Given Sunday) and Aimee Teegarden (Prom), this thriller follows an all-too human evil going about his murderous ways in a small town community. Beneath the ...
