Category: 1/10

Note: Also known as Dark Image and Mirror Image

The best thing about this inept thriller is the character introduction. It’s a cool concept to see the people who made up the key components of the flick punched in a fever style of newspaper printing. That’s the best you’re gonna see in this pointlessly inept wannabe crime crap which needs to be avoided at all costs.

Stupid bitch Jessica and her silly friends are up against supernatural spirits and Detective Watts is on the call. Her uncle is rich and powerful and also daddy issues. Don’t mention that the female characters wear enough eyeshadow to presume they had to be punched in both eyes, hinting that only a concussion was the motivation in their involvement.

Terrible visions of cruelty and torture begin to plague her mind. Jessica still demands to live her own life, despite the visions of darkness, and the Dante’s comedy of cruelty promising to destroy her and everyone she loves. This comes in the way of inane parties and celebrations which really are as lame despite the intention to make it interesting.

This is some really bad shit and it’s tough to find a quality in any mode. The pathetic actors, the brainless story, the shameless whores, the incompetent sound design, it’s all bad. The thoughtless ineptitude about ghosts and demons is so amateruishly awful it’s barely worth to see it. This is really one to forget.

1/10

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1697973/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_5

Often one of the reasons that pulp horror appeals is the common trope of friendship. For most, adulthood happens, people disappear, they move on; it’s just life. So there’s an almost intoxicating sense of nostalgia when the cast of characters as long-term buddies, all liberated from the world and its responsibilities by their trust and intimacy towards each other.

When the murders begin, the situation becomes more extreme as the buddies as fight for their lives – together. Unlike strangers, they resist abandoning one another, and desperately attempt saving their companions rather than leave them behind. The whole tragedy is compounded by the simple element that the characters truly value each other.

Dark Ride spends nearly the entire time trying to achieve this and just doesn’t make the cut. As pretty much everything else is some tedious yarn about something to do with an escaped insane aslyum maniac, this is all that it leaves itself with, and still can’t pull it off. With such a tedious story and lack of imagination, the failure to produce a convincing fantasy about young relationships is an impressively terrible stroke of ineptitude.

Following its gory introduction, which at least promises some kind of demented mayhem, the remainder of the tale resolves around a completely superficial set of characters and killers. All are abysmally unlikable and disposable, by being so distant, unlikable, and empty. They become such a chore to watch and the dogshit performances don’t help either.

Though there is an endless goldmine of opportunity with the horror carousel theme, offering rich possibilities from the psychological to the merely slapstick, the directors barely explore or research their ideas at all beyond the most predictable and staple ingredients. With such a lack of content or experimentation, all that’s left are the most basic and safest predictable slasher clichés, which are barely enough to thrill anyone beyond the age of 13.

What makes things worse is how tough it is to even think of any improvements that could be done to make it better, at least without firing 95% of the cast. The sets are somewhat suitably deranged, the masks are at least a preliminary endeavour, and the almost supernatural strength of the antagonist could have been exploited. Now I’d like to get off this ride please.

1/10

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433963/

Upruptly awakened from hypersleep, two spacemen on an intergalactic vessel are faced with the curious question of their missing comrades and disappeared memories. Lost in darkness and space, the remaining crew embarks on a rescue mission for themselves to save humanity.

Although well produced with a cast of competent actors, a clearly sizable budget, and even initiating with a sense of mystery that resembles the classic Cube, the ferocious editing and hammy script work to scramble the brain and make watching a chore. By the first 20 minutes it’s obvious that the narrative relies on a repetitive cycle of hyperbole, suspense and action, which gets rapidly becomes intolerable.

Quad and Foster’s overacting theatrics are immediately repulsive. Traue does a nice version of a mila jovovich, a hottie who speaks eengrish with big tits. The emotions they share are few and primitive, not unlike the mutant cannibal tribespeople foes, completely vapid and superficial – possibly what the director expected their audience to be.

What’s worse is that Pandorum rips off Alien so much. The set design, architecture, costumes, antagonists, concepts, characters, storyline twist. With just a little work it could have been salvaged as a dark fantasy tale. But as it stands, this is painful and as bad as it can get.

1/10