Just so...so bad

Brilliant and touching

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Psychiatrist with a brain tumor spends a weekend with her husband and sister at their cabin. A knock on the door brings a young man who turns out to have a gun. Shortly thereafter, another man arrives, and he turns out to be a former patient of the doctor's, and he wants revenge. While he was in her care, he was given injections of an experimental drug that the doctor was trying on him as a guinea pig because they both have the same type of brain tumor. As the victims are held hostage, psychological games are played; I don't understand why except there has to be a reason to make this movie. Secrets are revealed, of course. I got confused at the end. I must have missed something because it didn't make any sense to me at all. But I give this film 5 stars for the good acting and the dialogue.

My review is as in the subject above. By all means waste a tiny fraction of your life watching this, if... you absolutely must.If you must read more of my review, then here goes: it is a standard issue suspense movie, which takes everything from the genre and gives back pulp suspense for pulp brained viewers. Most people will probably quite enjoy this in the sense that most people think Richard Dawkins is a pompous arrogant man whose theory of evolution is at variance with the truth etc. (and not an extremely intelligent, most gifted scientist). Anyway, enough digression.The Dark Hours = A mundane exercise. As the cover blurb informs - it is indeed just another usual lonely cabin in the woods and vulnerable few staying there until the inevitable (yawn) probably starts zzz zzz zzz. I'll leave the events for your imagination, of course. Sorry, but I've given nothing particular away that you can't know already from simple reading about the movie and yet, it really does indeed do nothing more than what it says on the tin: Lazy, unoriginal film-making, neatly packaged into the average "suspense" genre.A movie rated 1/10 is so bad you can actually laugh at it. This movie, isn't bad enough to laugh at. It's just boring & unoriginal. So, it is indeed one of thousands upon thousands of instantly forgettable 2/10's

I can not say enough good things about "The Dark Hours". Don't let the unoriginal title phase you, this flick is exactly what the horror genre needs. This is a type of film that requires every second of your attention, for every little action comes back and ties in at the end. Performances are believable all-around, and Adian Devin makes a brilliant villain, simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. The film is exceptionally well shot on its tiny budget (less than a half-million Canadian dollars). Paul Fox has truly done a bang-up job on his directional debut here. His style and visual creativity elevate what is already a great film and makes it both intellectually stimulating AND a feast for the eye. Wil Zmak's script is intelligent and never underestimates its audience, and the ending will leave a definite mark on your mind. I'd also like to point out the music score, which was downright brilliant. As a film score fan I can say that even though this score will unfortunately never see a CD release it is quite a remarkable and original score. Gore fans will get a kick out of the finger scene as well. Really great horror film; simply not to be ignored. Why can't we have more films like this?

Director Paul Fox' The Dark Hours does one thing extremely well that is a staple of horror--it makes you squirm. This is a very disturbing, occasionally hard to watch film. Viewers with sensitive constitutions should be forewarned.It's not so much that it's gory--although it is a bit, but Fox understands that the key to the effect he's shooting for is character development. So this is ultimately a small ensemble film--five characters in a couple of rooms, and we get to know all of these characters very well, thanks to both the writing, by Wil Zmak, and a fine set of performances. The characters are fully fleshed out and we can either identify and/or sympathize with them, so when some of them do terrible things to others, it has a lot more impact, and even when it's only a threat and there's nothing graphic about it, we feel it almost as if these events were happening to friends. The Dark Hours is very literally a psychological film, a fact reflected in its main character's occupation and the circumstances of the villainous characters.It's also a "rubber reality" film--those are defined partially through "shifting" realities, where we as an audience, usually along with at least some characters, don't know quite what was real, if anything. After the recent spate of rubber reality films that all used essentially the same plot--including Stay (2005), The Jacket (2005), November (2004), The I Inside (2003), and eight or nine others going at least all the way back to Jacob's Ladder (1990) and the short The Awakening (1990)--The Dark Hours very refreshingly uses different kinds of twists in its questionably hallucinatory succession of scenes. The ending of the film is clear enough while still being nicely ambiguous. There is also an alternate ending on the DVD that is less ambiguous, but I don't think it works nearly as well. More ambiguity is better in a film like this.And if you want themes and subtexts, Fox has them here in spades, including the desperation of those who know they're dying, the classic "who's crazy" conundrum between psychiatric professionals and their patients, and the turmoil of disintegrating relationships.But you don't have to pay attention to that stuff to enjoy this excellent film. Just sit back and squirm.