The scariest thing about Dark House, the winner of this year's Fangoria's Frightfest film competition, is that it's the winner of this year's Frightfest film competition. How unutterably bad must the competing films have been? The thought is indeed a chilling one.
The plot of Dark House is a combination of the traditional haunted house story and the psycho killer-themed thriller, with high-tech holographic scare tactics thrown in for in-your-face effect. Director/scripter Darin Scott (whose prior directing experience consists of the 1998 crime drama Caught Up) offers not a lot new here, relying on the kind of ho-hum slasher gore we've grown so accustomed to in low budget genre cinema.
There are a couple of bright points in this run-of-the-mill creepshow darkness, the most notable of which is the hysterically insane performance turned in by Diane Salinger as Miss Darrode, evil mistress of the foster home where all the mad mayhem takes place -- both real-time and in spooky purgatorial re-creation. Horror legend Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) also shines as commercial haunted house impresario Mr. Walston, coming off when we first meet him like John Lithgow playing as Christian McKay playing Orson Welles.
Meghan Ory takes the starring role as Claire, who we first encounter as a youngster with more guts than common sense. She stumbles into the Darrode House after the grisly killings of all its young boarders, who are strewn about the household like so many bloodied rag dolls; instead of running from the slaughter like a normal kid, young Claire (played by Courtney Robinson) takes a slow and contemplative tour of the abattoir, ending up in the kitchen where Miss Darrode -- presumably stricken with remorse -- is in the process of grinding away her hands in the InSinkErator.
Flash forward 14 years, by which time Claire has gained enough normalcy to be traumatized by the Darrode House events. (Oh, sure, NOW she's scared of the place.) Her whack-a-doodle psychologist suggest she re-enter the house (now deserted, natch) as a form of confrontational therapy. Or something.
The perfect opportunity presents itself when Walston pays a visit to Claire's acting class, looking for some rubes (I mean, talent) to serve as hosts and hostesses at his newest spook house attraction: Darrode House! Wow, what a coincidence, and Claire quickly convinces her fellow thespians to take him up on the offer.
The rest is all arterial-spray sweetness and computers-gone-haywire light, as the evil spirits in the house take over the high-tech effects programming and make mincemeat of the participants, one by bloody one.
If I didn't know any better (which of course I don't), I'd swear filmmaker Scott had it in for Microsoft. When the system admin's network is taken over by supernatural forces, a particularly insistent sequence of trouble screens begins flashing across his monitor: messages like "DANGER: virus alert," "WARNING: Your computer has become unstable," and "CRITICAL FAILURE! The system has been infected!" are enough to strike fear into the heart of even the most unflappable of geeky observers.
And that, frankly, is the scariest scene in this otherwise pretty uninspired stab at horror.
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