Only Darkness Year: 1996 Director: John Kirby, Mitchell Morgan Written by: Mitchell Morgan Threat:Psychopath Weapon of Choice: Knife Based upon: nothing IMDb page: The IMDb does not list this movie.

Other movies in this series:
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Rish Outfield's reviews
It said Horror AND Thriller on the box.
The first in my thirteen dollar movie marathon, Only Darkness, looked cheap. In fact, fairly early on, I came to the realization that it was an ambitious student film, complete with 'creative' (code for stupid) opening credits with badly posed shots of the actors. I could have done without the avant-garde lighting, which I initially thought was supposed to create some sort of mood, but then thought might be a byproduct of the minuscule budget. A lot of it looked like something I could make, but I was willing to see it through.
The movie was about a British horror writer who becomes involved in a thriller of his own when he saves a young mute lass from a wide-eyed would-be assassin. Not a lot happens, and the ending was beyond idiotic, but there were some moments when things worked out well, perhaps better than you'd expect.
I would imagine most people would not enjoy this film simply because of its lack of production value, professional-look, and cinematic stars. It had a few moments that were bad even for a student film, but since I'm into filmmaking, I was more forgiving of some of that stuff. I started to watch it for the story, rather than anything professional . . . and there were some nice scenes. The dialogue was clever and well-written, making me (and not for the first time) wish I were British (it included cool UK phrases like "pissed as a newt" and "arty-farty bollocks"). That ended up being the best thing about this movie ("To him, murder is common-place."). The male lead wasn't too bad, though, and the waif was achingly beautiful. The villain was the spitting image of the guy with the knives in the Puppet Master series. You know who I mean? Nice to see posters for Italian horror films, such as 2 Evil Eyes, and Quattro Mosche Di Velluto Grigio, as it led me to believe the filmmakers at least LIKED Horror movies. Until the stupid where-was-the-threat ending, this looked to be one of the better movies in my marathon. I took into account that this was an amateur film, but still, the camerawork, lighting, and actors' blocking were sometimes awful.
On the negative side, it's awful slow. It included annoying dream sequences that were unnecessary and distracting. There was a lot of bizarre, silly stuff that I hardly found necessary. What the goth bar had to do with this, I'll never know. Strange that there were no other people in the whole city except for the main characters. A bit of the action was inexplicably left out. At one point, I wrote "What? If he was dead--then how come he was alive?" There were some stupid(!) split-screen scenes, that I felt had to be an assignment in a film class. The music almost never worked. At some moments when it was supposed to be scary or exciting, there's this weird romance or porno music playing, similar to Dick Dale stuff. There were also some really nice Elvis Costello-like (and Lennonesque) songs by a group called Rachel's Basement, but they completely didn't belong in the scenes they played against (was this all an accident?). One thing that kept bothering me was: no one is willing to believe that the main character met a girl in the street running from a madman. NO ONE. There were no supernatural elements to his story, nothing. And yet, when he lies (badly) to the cops about how his girlfriend died, they believe him. There was more than one badly executed fight sequence and blood fountain. But again, I've seen real budget films that do that. And of course, there's that STUPID ending to contend with. Hmmm.
I listed Psychopath as the Threat, but it turned out to all be a misunderstanding . . . though that doesn't look as good on a video box.
I'd Recommend It To: Student film fans who actually find a copy and prefer it to the other options.
Note: A word to say about the "Bad Title" skull. Lots of times, such as Mutant Man or C.H.U.D. II:Bud the Chud, it's obviously going to get a skull. But other times, the titles are meaningless. Only Darkness is a nice title, sounding intelligent and cryptic . . . but it ties in no way into the movie. Sometimes these titles are confusing, but why? No reason? Okay, you get a Bad Title skull.

The tyranist's thoughts
Not too long after Rish watched this he handed the tape to me. I couldn't really decide from his review whether I would enjoy it or not and so it ended up in my bin for a long time before I finally decided to pull it out and watch it. I think I would have watched it sooner if I'd known it wasn't going to be as bad as I expected.
Over the years we've seen some really amateur movies that were listed on the IMDb so to find one that isn't even listed by them, my assumption was that it must be more amateur than I can handle. Fortunately, while it is low-budget and portions are a bit amateur, it isn't as bad as a lot of movies I've seen.
The cast is unknown and largely forgettable. The script is okay. The setting, nice, but underpopulated as Rish pointed out. But I didn't find it boring and it was apparent that while they may have lacked the resources, they were honestly trying to make giallo here.
Not only do they explicitly mention giallo as a genre, but the movie spends a great deal of time in giallo like situations. Where it fails is that they are trying to copy giallo rather than honor it. It is not enough to copy a thing, but you must take it and make it your own. Just look at most remakes of BBC series on American television. They're horrible because they just want to film the exact same thing that has already been done brilliantly.
Anyway, the movie was worth watching, but not so much so that you should try really hard to lay your hands on a copy. I don't imagine that would be very easy anyway.

Total Skulls: 25

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?