It’s a generic horror title for a fairly generic haunted house film. Madison decides to break into her childhood home with her fiancé and her cousin on the eve of its demolition. Once the house has her back in its clutches, a ‘1408’ parody with all the trimmings ensues. However, there is quite a bit of fun to be had watching the characters be forced to ignore basic logic for the sake of the plot. Also, keep an eye for the times that a single film take is inexplicably used multiple times in different scenes or even within the same scene. Darkness Rising boats some actually really good special effects but that does not negate a script that unintentionally has more humor than scares.
No special features are included on the disc besides the film’s trailer.
In spite of its similarly unimaginative title, Killing Ground is taunt and suspenseful as hell. In this film, Sam and Ian, a young couple, goes camping in Australia. They find there is another tent set up at the campsite already, but it seems to be abandoned and the tent ransacked. The mystery of the missing campers pulls Sam and Ian into a life and death struggle to survive.
I’m deliberately avoiding spoilers because you’ve seen enough ‘escaping madmen in the wilderness’ movies to get the gist of this genre goes and letting this film’s surprises play out is what makes it so effective. Writer/Director Damien Power does a fantastic job of building tension and there are some shots in this film that are as creative as they are disturbing. A keen storytelling ability raises this tale above other movies of this type and makes it an edge of your seat experience.
No special features are included on the disc besides the film’s trailer.
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.