RELEASED IN 2014 and directed by Colin Theys, "Deep in the Darkness" chronicles events when a doctor (Sean Patrick Thomas), his wife (Kristen Bush) and daughter move to a quaint New England town where they learn very strange things are happening. Dean Stockwell plays an eccentric neighbor and Anthony Del Negro his grandson. Blanche Baker appears as the matriarch of the town while Cara Loften plays a troubled blonde. The first half is effective as a haunting mystery/horror flick with Thomas compelling as the protagonist. Naturally, I thought I was in for a good movie. At the mid-point, however, the secret of the town is revealed and it's serviceable, but not wholly successful, although the creatures (or whatever you want to call them) look great. From there, the movie goes off the rails and loses the viewer's attention. The captivating power of the first half disappears as the remaining scenes are strung together without any dramatic or aesthetic merit. Worse, the film's too ambiguous with way too many questions left unanswered or, if you try to connect the dots, the answers don't add up (speaking as someone who enjoys 'figuring out' challenging movies).The curious differences in quality of the two halves can perhaps be explained by the fact that the first half follows the book quite closely whereas the second half deviates and the director/writer/editors simply didn't know how to complete what they effectively set-up in the first half. They tried to do their own thing and failed miserably. THE FILM RUNS 1 hours & 40 minutes and was shot in Moodus, Connecticut. WRITERS: Michael Laimo (novel) and John Doolan (screenplay). GRADE: C-

In case you read some of my user comments in the past, you might know that I'm an incurable sucker for two things when it comes to horror movies, namely juicy titles and imaginatively sinister movie posters! If I stumble upon a film that has one or preferably both of those aspects in place, I completely disregard all possible ratings and reviews – hardly even look at them, in fact – and make it a top- priority to watch it! Needless to say that this peculiar and rather superficial habit already resulted in me watching a copious amount of downright dreadful movies that I could have avoided by a simple and quick glance at the IMDb rating, but I keep on making the same mistake… Even though not nearly as hopeless as, say, "Invasion of the Blood Farmers", "Deep in the Darkness" sort of falls into the same category. I was immediately hooked on its title (containing two horror key words) and intrigued by the poster image of the house with all the branching of roots into the soil, but it quickly became obvious that "Deep in the Darkness" is a routine, inconspicuous and mediocre-at-best genre effort. The plot contains a handful of good and ambitious ideas, and it's fairly clear that director Colin Theys is an enthusiast young director that knows his classics, but the film eventually reverts to familiar clichés and features too many dull & redundant moments. It's another variation on the classic "small town with a dark secret" horror premise, in which a family of new arrivals are either warned to leave their new home as quick as possible or gradually pushed to participate in bizarre rituals. Doctor Michael Cayle initially laughs away the advice to bring an animal sacrifice to the so-called "Isolates" living in caves and tunnels underneath the forests nearby Ashborough, New Hampshire, but naturally comes to regret that he didn't. "Deep in the Darkness" benefices mostly from realistic character drawings and a few moments of admirable tension-building. The make-up effects, particularly on the Isolate creatures, are also quite professional. Being a horror movie like there are thirteen in a dozen, however, there definitely should have been more carnage and on-screen violence.

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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".