I attended the film premiere of Dark Rising, directed by Andrew Cymek, on Wednesday, Oct 24th at the Scotiabank Theatre. This film will be released on DVD on October 30th. When I found I was attending this screening, I did some searching on the net to see if there was any info about this Canadian, horror-comedy but not much. I did find a mini-synopsis for the film on a horror movie site and a very short description on IMDB.
Alright, so about the premiere… Whenever I attend an event, I like to “scope out” the audience or attendees to see who I’m mingling with. The theatre was almost full and diverse in age groups. Of course, by the time the lead actress/producer (Brigitte Kingsley) and the other executive producer introduced the film, I realised I was among family and friends of those involved in the movie. What this means is that everyone will probably “like” the film for one reason/person or another. There is something to be said for attending a premiere screening with a public audience. The responses are truly genuine – good or bad.
The movie is about a young girl, Summer (Brigitte Kingsley), who is taken to another world through a time portal that her dad inadvertently opened while reading from an old, mythical text. It appears her father was a linguist scholar or some kind of professor. Fast forward a good 10 or 15 years; we find ourselves introduced to a young guy, Jason (Landy Cannon) who just broke up with his high-school sweetheart. Out of the blue he goes to meet his best friend, Ricky, played by former wrestling star Jay “Christian Cage” Reso. Ricky is a total jerk and thinks he is God’s gift to women. We soon learn that Jason’s ex-girlfriend Marlene (Haley Shannon) has been fooling around with Jasmine (Vanessa James), who is friends with both of them.
Cut to Marlene, Jasmine and another friend named Renee (Julia Schneider). They all claim to be some kind of witches. Renee has been having nightmares about a young girl being tortured. They go into a used-book store, where the store owner convinces Renee that she can use her witch powers to deal with these nightmares and see who this young girl may be. She buys an old book and plans to have a séance that night with the other two girl lovers. The girls end up going camping with the ‘boys.’ The idea is that Jason plans to get back together with his ex-girlfriend.
The girls want to soak up some sun, so they go topless for one, very ridiculous sun-bathing scene. Then, it’s night time for the séance. The girls go deep into the woods and try to conjure up some kind of ghost or spirit. The lesbian lovers go off to have some fun and leave Renee alone. The sex scene between these girls is hardly a turn-on even for me. To cut a long story short, if you are watching this film purely for the sexual content, you would be much better off visiting an adult website, where you can find a wealth of superior erotic films.
Back to Renee, who continues to read from the old book. Just when she thinks nothing is happening, she hears strange noises. The movie moves faster from this point on. It just happens that Renee opened a portal and a demon has come to this world and kills one of the lovers and injures the other. The rest of the gang are confused and scared.
The demon attacks their camp; Ricky and Renee run away leaving Jason on his own. He is saved by a ‘warrior princess’ clad in a skimpy outfit and armed with an axe and knives…how hot! [read sarcatically] This ‘warrior princess’ is the demon huntress from another dimension who came after this one demon. Basically, this demon huntress is none other than young Summer (Taylor Barber), who disappeared some years ago and is now all grown-up.
Jason recruits his friends to help save Summer and get rid of this demon. Unfortunatley, all of Jason’s friends are killed by this demon. He saves Summer by pushing the demon back into the portal. The only problem is that Jason has to go with the demon… oh no, poor Summer, she’s left all alone in our world! Fast forward… We then see Summer working as a model for 1-900 ads. Out of nowhere a portal opens and voilà, Jason re-appears! He’s now a demon hunter and needs his princess’ help because the demons have reproduced. So that is that, our heroes kiss and go off to battle the demons.
There is not much else to say about this film. The music goes well in the sense that it adds to the comedic spirit of some of the scenes. This is not meant to be a deep film about good and evil. The ‘warrior princess’ is reminiscent of Xena but by far, lacks lustre and depth. Personally, this film was not as good as other horror-comedies. Will it find an audience? Definitely! Do I recommend it? I’d say at your own peril… you may just like it.
