Dark Summer (2015)

As Good As It Gets

An Exercise In Nonsense

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Keir Gilchrist, who I typically love (he was great in It Follows and United States of Tara, where I was first introduced to him), plays Daniel in this supernatural horror/thriller, a bit of a hacker who is under house arrest for cyberstalking his classmate and love interest, Mona (played by Grace Phipps). Things start to get spooky after he watches her commit suicide and his friends Abby (Stella Maeve) and Kevin (Maestro Harrell) are worried about his safety — and his sanity — as he spirals into a pretty dangerous mental state and fears for his own life.Honestly… meh. This movie didn't offer much. It occasionally had some interesting atmosphere but ultimately it was just boring. I thought the premise — Daniel being stuck in his home while one might normally run the hell away — was interesting initially, but the scares were just too cheesy and predictable to really have any serious effect.I may have audibly yawned when it's revealed early on that his friend Abby has this unrequited love for him. It winds up being crucial to the storyline in the surprise ending, but it was just predictable. His either complete obliviousness to the painfully obvious or inability to voice his emotions just fits right into the whole stereotype of the teenager who is textbook smart (able to hack into computers, etc) but emotionally stunted.I thought the dream that Daniel had of him and Abby in the pool was cool, and sort of fit into the atmosphere that I WISH this movie had. It was like a weird offspring of hazy, dreamlike indie movie and cheap teen thriller. There were a couple good, creepy moments — his phone going blank and playing "When" by Elysian Fields, for example — but largely the scares fell flat, especially any time they showed Mona. I would have much rather she be kept more vague and shadowy, or not physically appearing at all.But then suddenly we descend inexplicably into the world of witchcraft and spells and while there's a decent surprise ending, it was too far gone for me at that point. Even Peter Stormare couldn't save this one with his painfully stereotypical parole officer role. Booo.

A young hacker, Daniel (Keir Gilchrist), gets put on house arrest for cyber stalking. The girl he stalked, Mona Wislon (Grace Phipps), takes her own life right before his eyes then the stalker becomes the stalked.Initially I thought the movie was an incredibly lame idea. A girl takes her own life just because some twitterpated teen was stalking her. Was he that malicious in his stalking? As the movie unfolded we got to know a little more about the suicide girl and the reason for her last hurrah.Although it got better the movie was still flawed. Some scenes dragged on too long without adding any benefit and there was too much music with lack of dialog. It was very Ang Lee--almost as if we were supposed to understand the mood through the musical score and facial expressions. It got to the point where I wondered if the film was on a word budget. There were far too many scenes of the scrawny, bare-chested hacker, with no action and no speaking. I completely understand that mood can be set with music alone but there is a way to do it.There were some jump scares and crazy poltergeist stuff. I actually had no problems with that as it fell in line with the flow of the movie and they were done well enough. As I mentioned, the movie does get better. In fact, things begin to make sense until they throw in a loop which actually just creates a plot hole. Don't you hate that? The movie could've wrapped up just fine, made sense, and be a decent movie but the writers outsmarted themselves and left a gaping hole in the plot. What a bummer.

Oh my god what an annoying movie.Close ups. Close ups. Close ups. Slow camera panning, close up camera panning. So much fudging close up camera panning. Jesus Christ almighty. This is one seriously annoyingly shot movie. Dear director, or whoever decided to have all shots, (except three, as I can remember) being zoomed in close up shots: Having close up shots of the actors, the 'action', the walking, the talking, the everything, does not make it good or interesting. For some shots, OK, but for every single god damn shot? I hope you never make a movie again. Seriously, someone should have punched him square in the mouth and said: You are not a good director, stop it with the close ups!!OK, on to the movie. There is a super skinny silent dude, a dopey eyed chick, and a.. black dude thats, well, he was alright. And there's Peter Stormare, he's kinda cool. There is some kind of plot, but damn it's slow. Slow and boring, and not interesting. There are some scenes that are supposed to be suspenseful and scary, but they are not. It is not scary at all. Not even slightly.And did I mention the close ups? And the camera panning the walls and the ceiling and the floor and the grass and the actors, and the everything ever? And the close ups? And the close ups? Close ups. Close. Ups.Movie is a waste of time. There is not fun here, at all.

The same old story and in this horror film. A haunted house, spirits and someone who is running for his life in the limited square meters of a house. I don't understand why they keep doing movies that are so similar and why Ι continue to watch them? There is something addictive in these movies that's why. The sound of a creaking door, a scream, the strange voices, the thin line between logic and paranormal, to name a few. The only thing that I actually liked was the finale. Not an unexpected one but good. In a nutshell, if you like this kind of movies and you don't have much of expectations, this is the right choice for you.