[Dark Corners]
Plot:Karen Clarke wakes suddenly to the piercing shriek of her clock radio. It is still dark, the green glow of the digital numbers read 03:18. She shuffles to the bathroom, switches on the light and recoils in horror at the reflection in the mirror - - she has been badly beaten but apparently has no memory of how! She collapses to her knees and throws up into the toilet. Something metal hits the porcelain. The confused Karen reaches in and pulls out a key. A very strange locker key...

Karen works in a mortuary - preparing bodies for pre-funeral viewings and on this particular morning all seems relatively norrnal ... until a corpse sits up, grabs Karen's wrist and curses her for “What she has done!”. And that's just the beginning. Ugly, twisted creatures lead by the monstrous Needlelooth seem to be stalking her every move, plaguing her already bizarre existence. Even in her own home she feels their malevolent presence.

And every time she wakes, she has been beaten. Her only reprieve from this hellish existence is when she sleeps. For the moment Karen Clarke falls asleep she awakes as Susan Hamilton - a normal girl with a normal life and a normal job. Susan believes Karen to be her nightmare alter ego. Karen believes Susan to be her dream of a better life. But which is the real world and which is the dream?

As strange occurences begin to infiltrate Susan's once normal life, the boundaries between conscious and subconscious become increasingly blurred. But is she prepared to face the truth? The truth held within her own mind. The truth unlocked only by that strange locker key.

Cast: Thora Birch, Toby Stephens, Christien Anholt.

My Thoughts:More like Dark boredom.

Review:After watching "Dark Corners" I had a plethora of questions, for one.....why on earth did Thora Birch, a pretty talented young actress take on a role in this movie? She's talented, I mean just look at "American Beauty" and "The Hole". Did she really need the work that badly? Second question..who greenlights stuff like this? "Dark Corners" can be summed up as a bad acid trip, meets "Saw". The movie deals with a woman named Karen who has pretty much what one would describe as a happy life. She has a fiancee, a job, and possibly a kid on the way. But there is one thing screwing up her perfect life, and that's those pesky visions of being murdered by a man in a hoodie who she's deemed "Needletooth".

This despite the fact that the guy's teeth are never even shown in the film at all, and the worst he has is a really fugly mug. So just what is at the root of Karen's visions...is there really someone stalking her in her dreams? Is it a sign of things to come? Or is it just that too many hours working at the local morgue is beginning to play tricks on the old mind? "Dark Corners" presents all of these questions wrapped up into one painfully boring 92 minute acid trip. Which is really what the film is. After starting off in a very promising fashion where a woman meets a grissly end at the hands of Needletooth inside a church, the film just plummits downward and never stops.

In fact, it picks up speed as if it's trying to go down as fast as possible. Other than flashy camera imagery which comes into play when Karen has one of her "episodes"...there's really nothing to "Dark Corners" that could excite or intrigue the viewer. And basically the film constantly teases that something interesting might happen only to quickly back off of that potential. Thora Birch gives a great performance but there's really nothing backing her up except Toby Stephens (Severance) as the creepy psychologist who she contacts to help rid her of her twisted terrifying dreams, and who may or may not be up to no good.

Stephens character is about as interesting as the films supporting cast gets, which is a shame considering that two characters who work with Thora's character at the morgue would've made perfect red-herring's for possibly being the films main antagonist. But misused characters and missed opportunities is just all in a days work for "Dark Corners" which just can't seem to catch a break all throughout it's duration. To top all of that off, the films script is just a confusing mess with plotholes, shallow characters, and no real string of sense or method contained within it at all. I was truly hoping for something good to happen at the end so I could atleast write about one positive thing happening in this film, but even the ending which made a daft attempt at being clever and shocking...failed on all and every levels.

Add to that the supposedly startling revelation of the killer and their connection to Karen's dreams fails to explain a damn thing! Sure the killer's been revealed, but the last words spoken by a certain character at the end just toss the movie back into the "what the fuck?" zone because it basically sets up a whole new set of questions. "Dark Corners" is truly a waste of time and should only be popped into the dvd player when one is planning a nice night of torture for their worst enemy.

Positives:Thora Birch gives a wonderful performance.

Negatives:Messy script, bad supporting cast, nonsense ending, I could go on for days.

Overall:"Danger Will Robinson!"..stay away from this one!





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