Murder in the Dark (2015)
Directed by Dagen Merrill
Staring Luke Arnold, Phil Austin, Yann Bean, Samrat Chakrabarti
4 seconds of shaky closeup. 4 seconds of panning scenery. 4 seconds of vertical pan of setting. 4 seconds of shaky cam with poorly captured dialogue. 4 seconds of panning scenery. 4 seconds of out of focus longshot. 4 seconds of Dutch angle shaky cam with poorly captured dialogue. 4 seconds of panning scenery with poorly captured dialogue. Wash, rinse, repeat. Cut, print.
Murder in the Dark made me physically uncomfortable. Shot in a style that elicits nausea and dread through motion sickness, I had to turn it off several times and let my eyes rest with soothing videos of strobe lights and Flaming Lips concerts. Maybe if I was stumbling drunk, the zooming imagery and slanting perspective would line up just right. Unfortunately, I vowed to start doing my job sober, which was a grave error in this case.
The reason behind this sickening cinematography lies within the film’s gimmick. In an attempt to elicit real emotion from the actors, no one acting in the movie was given a script. They were given characters to portray, a basic story framework, and then told when they were killed off. The director then puts them on strict rails, and follows them from scene to scene, filming their natural reactions.
This is stupid for a number of reasons. First, you have to do everything in basically one take. If you are trying to catch the natural reactions of the cast, you can’t just reshoot after a major event. You also have to shoot in order of events, which is a very problematic way to shoot a film. If certain conditions aren’t great, you just have to roll with it, which is exactly what the movie does.
This also means that you have to shoot on the fly. Since you’re just following people around and trying to get good reaction shots, there’s no ability to frame, light, or properly capture a shot. The reason for all the spliced in shots of scenery is that they only got about 4 seconds of usable footage at a time, and had to figure out how to string it all together. No matter how complete the narrative is, it’s visually a confusing mess.
Storywise, a group of campers sets up in some old Turkish ruins and decides to play a game of
“Murder in the Dark.” For those of you unfamiliar, it’s like Mafia, which is a lot like Werewolf, which is a lot like Saboteur, which is a lot like Assassin, which is a lot like The Resistance, which is a lot like Bang! They’re all pretty similar to Town of Salem. Christ, I need more outgoing friends. So one person takes the role of the murderer while the rest try to figure it out, and then that literally happens.
For what it is, the movie is fine. The actors act fine considering they have no script nor any idea what is going on. The film is shot as well as can be considering the cameraman had to frame everything on the fly and shoot it while walking backwards. The plot twist is okay considering that the movie is basically unwatchable. The problem is that all of those considerations have an incredibly low ceiling for quality. The fundamental structure of the film is so flawed that it ruins the entire project.
I really wish that I didn’t hate this movie. Experimental horror is really hit or miss, and you have to keep that in mind when someone tries something new. People must have thought that the creators of The Blair Witch Project were insane, and it started an entire new genre of film. Not telling your actors what is going on is not the way of the future. I admire the intrepid spirit it took to make this movie. I like it as much as I can anything that gives me motion sickness.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
