20131001: Horror Review--Dark Town

Dark Town

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. American live action feature length film, 2004, rated R, 88 minutes, horror
2. IMDB: 3.4/10.0 from 328 users; filmed in Los Angeles, CA, USA; estimated budget, one million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 11% liked it from 97 audience ratings.
4. Netflix claimed 17,575 ratings with an average of 2.5 stars of five.
5. Directed by Desi Scarpone; screenplay by David Birke.
6. Starring: Janet Martin as Jen Armstrong, Delpaneaux Wills as Rakeem, Joel King as Curtis Armstrong Sr, Meghan Stansfield as Lisa, Claire Mills as Ellen, Curtis Nysmith as Curtis Armstrong Jr, Ariana Fronti as Monique, Sarah Horvath as Heather.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Slumlord Curtis Armstrong Sr goes to collect from his properties.  He gets more than he bargained for from his tenants.  He returns to his calm, safe, suburban home for his birthday.  Then he starts the blood bath after being very creepy.  He bites Heather, which turns her.


2. Heather has a Latino gangster boyfriend, Cinque, who is a drug dealer.  Some black youth decide to liberate Cinque's money stash, which he keeps in Heather's room.  Rakeem gets two men and Kisha to go with him to do the theft.


3. The neighborhood watch stops the black group, but Rakeem pulls a pistol on them when they were distracted.  One of their party gets shot by the watch; they hide at the Armstrong house.  Cinque shows up too, to get his cash.  Heather kills him.


4. The vampire monster status transfers in perhaps 20 minutes, which accelerates all the proceedings.


5. The gang violence just serves as feeding sources for the new vampires, or whatever they are.  There's a small amount of drama in whether a person can fight off the change or not.


6. Jen and Rakeem fight if off somewhat, and try to kill all the other vampires.  When that does not work too well, they take another exit.  That they survived at all is just ridiculous.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary:  Suburban dysfunction plus vampirism meets inner city gang violence.
2. One star of five. One blackhole for acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Soft focus.  Too much darkness.  Too many home movies that are total garbage in terms of visuals. 


2. Sound: 6/10 OK, but not great. The loud parts are way too loud, and the soft parts too soft.


3. Acting: 1/10 Would someone please stay in the same accent?  How did Rakeem go from being low on courage to being able to fight off being a vampire?


4. Screenplay: 2/10  The first 25 minutes were almost opaque in terms of motivation.  The rules for dealing with the supernatural seemed to change every so many minutes.  Some consistency might have been nice.  The ending was unlikely at best.


5. Special Effects: 3/10 Horribly bad.  Cheap, poor, stupid.