ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

r_goodwin With the recent flow of found footage and torture porn movies flooding the market I thought the genre may be receding and we might,just might return to genuine scary and well thought out horror. Well I was wrong.They're still churning em out I.m afraid.Tha sad thing is that this film could have actually been SO MUCH BETTER!!! Daniel Baldwin,never being an Box office draw shows why...overacting creates what should have been a menacing character but results in a totally laughable villain.The tension was non existent and the long long drawn out torture scenes are so exploitative and quite sick,it just leaves an empty pit in the stomach and you have to ask yourself,Why I am bothering?Well I did and I wasn't wrong.Film runs out of ideas.logical ending and sadly fails in every dept.Don't waist your time.Don.t say I didn't warn you!!!

kezopster I'm hesitant watching movies featuring other members of the Baldwin family not naked Alec. Sorry guys, but there have been quite a few clunkers along the way, you know? So, I was skeptical going into this and pleasantly surprised with the performance submitted by Daniel Baldwin as the villain. (No spoiler, it's revealed early in the film.) (As another reviewer mentioned, the cop scenes are trite. For worse, stilted cop scenes, see the movie THE WICKED.) From reading the other reviews, I'm guessing the point of the movie was focusing on the trauma being experienced by the victims, experiencing their horror. That's probably half the film and if I consider my viewing through that lens, then I still can't up my score. The female actors did a good job, but it still felt over-the-top too often.While the film attempts giving motivation to "The Ghost," his methods feel haphazard. SAW had motivation and over-the-top style to the killings. HOSTEL did the same. Heck, even Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE or THE HILLS HAVE EYES had the killing room better thought out. Or, maybe I watch too much DEXTER.

Robert W. The SAW franchise had a lot of brilliance to it including a great storyline for the most part. However, it also spawned a myriad of copycat films that have to keep pushing the envelope further and further so that they aren't even your typical horror film but something in a different genre altogether. There is grotesque, and horrific and then there is just too much gore especially when you're aiming for realism. One of the things that made films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre so popular was the fact that it used imagination to further the horror. You didn't see limbs and body parts being hacked off or people being literally tortured in front of you, it left it up to the viewer to imagine what was happening. Sometimes you just don't need to see the torture. A Darker Reality is exactly that...horrific torture...a weak story and just gory murder after murder. The description of the film says its about the girls finally rising up and fighting against the killer but for the four minutes that happens its unsuccessful and the killer just chops them up before they get away. Stupid, trivial, grotesque and hard to watch.The only reason I score this slightly higher than a big fat zero is the performances in the film aren't a complete waste. Daniel Baldwin actually plays the twisted, psychopath pretty well. He is deeply disturbed, twisted, and actually carries the film pretty darn well considering. He might be the only reason I didn't just turn it off in the first fifteen minutes. Sunny Doench and James C. Burns are practically useless as the two cops chasing down the killer. The story is barely on them and there is no great chase or mystery unravelled. I think they are put into the story because it would seem strange to not have someone trying to catch the killer...but they are truly useless. All the girls, the victims in the film do a great job of being terrified and tortured however unfortunate that claim to fame might be.Co-creator and director Chris Kazmier is heralded by some fans as being a 'dark and brilliant' horror creator but I think he uses violent images as an excuse to be entertaining. I am a huge horror fan, I love slasher flicks but horror is taking an unfortunate turn into this reality driven blood fest and that's unfortunate. Even if you are a fan of SAW this is just utter garbage. Its an hour and a half of girls being tortured which in my book is a snuff film not entertainment. Dump this one!! 2/10

stsinger A few years ago Chris Kazmier and Christopher Hutson put out a film called "Dark Reality." It was a very different type of film; mostly improvised, it dealt with several women who had been captured by a lunatic and imprisoned. It focused almost entirely on the women in captivity. Strong stuff that was difficult to watch -- the IMDb page now claims the cast and crew thought it was "a joke," but if you watch the film and see what the actresses put themselves through, it's no joke.Now a few years later, Kazmier is back with an expansion of the original film called "A Darker Reality." Caught it on VOD recently in advance of its DVD release. The film takes the original premise and expands it. It shows us the actual psycho (played by Daniel Baldwin -- no spoilers there, that's his entire character) and shows the police attempts to find and capture him and save the women.Let's get the problems out of the way first -- the police stuff is bad. Pretty much "Movie/TV Police 101" -- gruff detective gets a partner he doesn't want, etc. But much of the movie focuses on the trapped women and the narrative of an escaped survivor, and holy crap, it is harrowing. You really feel the utter helplessness of these women and it's legitimately disturbing. And somehow, having Daniel Baldwin as the psycho makes it even a little creepier. It's not perfect and there are things that stretch credibility even in this type of film (for example, the psycho manages to have an absurd amount of victims in one area) and while the ending is a punch in the gut, it's a little confusing. And as you can tell from this review, it is definitely not for everyone. But it is very well done, and I am definitely looking forward to purchasing this film when it comes out on DVD so hopefully get some "Behind the scenes" things.