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quietearth [Celluloid 11.30.08] movie review horror

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Year: 2008
Release date: Unknown
Director: Huck Keppler
Writer: Huck Keppler
IMDB: link
Trailer: link
Review by: quietearth
Rating: 3 out of 10

There's one positive thing I can say about this film and that's that it has some great photography, but unfortunately that's about it. Dark Spirits is touted as a supernatural thriller, where after one sister is murdered, evil spirits pursue the other. Unfortunately the implementation of the storyline is so drawn out, the human reactions so unbelievable, that it failed utterly to keep my interest and in fact caused quite a bit of frustration.


The story revolves around Eva (Milka Minichova) who's sister is killed shortly after they had a fight, and Eva had a dream of her in danger. While upset, she seems to recover quite nicely and moves to Prague with her boyfriend. Now this is where the trouble starts: she keeps seeing her sister and she's constantly beset by weird sounds or the feeling of a presence nearby. These beginning scenes jump around erratically as if the editor was trying to piece together something that was broken. A foreboding scene would immediately jump to a pleasant one the next afternoon causing some disorientation as all involved are smiling as if nothing happened, and this continues throughout the film.

Where it starts to get frustrating is this continues for the first hour like a little girl plucking a flower: "He loves me, he loves me not". The film alternates between evil scene and possibly some semi-rational banter, to the next day where everything is hunky-dory. Over and over this happens, without pushing any tension or anxiety levels much beyond the last scene. By about 40 minutes in I was wondering why Eva wasn't in a straitjacket in a mental asylum, but no, she's still plugging along, even talking to the crazy guy in the park who seems to know what's going on.

Along with the frustration and inaccurate human responses was the fact that the film was shot entirely in English, and while it sounded creepy, it didn't work out at all. It should have been shot in it's native language and subtitled because some of the discourse sounded quite cryptic, and really, it just didn't fit.

In the end, there's not really much to say about this film. Not much happens, and it pretty much goes nowhere. I wouldn't recommend this film at all, but I do think the cinematographer Nicolas Loir did a great job. What should I say in closing? Sorry folks, I hate giving bad reviews, but this film was hampered by far too much inexperience.


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