Getting only one part of the horror equation right, A Darker Reality offers some visceral scenes of torture but without much of a story or any characters to make us care. Instead, the film fills its time with an empty relationship of stale banter between a detective and a psychiatrist investigating a case about missing girls; had this pairing had any chemistry at all, it would have gone a long way towards giving the film some substance. Sadly, the male lead lacks any personality at all, and woman seems to have been chosen for being a pretty face, and not for the ability to act. All that A Darker Reality really gives us is the unfortunate mental image of Daniel Baldwin masturbating in the grand tradition of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Thanks for that.
Ghost (Baldwin), a perverted psychotic, has abducted some women and uses them to fulfill various fetishes between forcing them to watch the gruesome dismemberment of people he’s killed. When he’s not doing that, Ghost enjoys turning his disfiguring hand upon the women, slowly turning them from beautiful nymphs into scarred victims. Hoping to stop him is a detective (James C. Burns) and a psychiatrist (Sunny Doench) who have few clues but a living survivor attempting to cope with what Ghost has done to her.
The characterizations in the film are almost comically bad, with the writer giving the detective the nickname ‘Cold Steel’, just in case we weren’t aware that his icy disposition wasn’t an isolated occurrence in this film, maybe thanks to a recent divorce settlement. Nope, that’s just how he is, and his nickname tells us that. Doench on the other hand can’t decide whether to play the part between a professional that happens to be pretty or a pretty professional who can’t get by without her looks. And Daniel Baldwin? He’s a bloated, sweaty, sarcastic mess whom, though a shallow character, gives us the only meaningfully well done scenes: the torture.
DVD Bonus Features
Only deleted scenes and the film’s trailer can be found here.
"A Darker Reality" is on sale January 10, 2012 and is not rated. Horror. Directed by Chris Kazmier. Written by Sxv'leithan Essex. Starring Daniel Baldwin, James C Burns, Sunny Doench.
