Dusk (2015) Online

My first review for a film. I went into this one not knowing any of the actors or director, only that is was a thriller and story line seemed intriguing. First half was a bit of a slow build up but was still very good to watch and all involved did a great job. Some parts annoyed me as I wanted to know what was happening but that is just me being impatient. This is a great little film. This is not some big budget Hollywood do up more of an Indie flick. This one will keep you guessing right till the end and then boom there is a twist that will blow you away. I have not seen such a twist since the sixth sense, recommended to all. This one will stay in mind for some time. Worth the watch.

MICHAEL MANEY'S feature film DUSK, by MONARCH HOME ENTERTAINMENT, is a horror movie on a truly frightening level, walking the line, in words of the real Man In Black, between terror and horror – a challenge DUSK pulls off with a nightmarish twist. An official selection at the Cincinnati Film Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, and several others, DUSK challenges the current bland crop of clichéd serial killers, inclement weather-bound sharks, and European hostels.

True horror is that knock on the door in the dark of the night. It's that tire that blows out miles from nowhere; or the call from the doctor needing to see you in person. It's terror that's uncontrollable, unknowable, and unexpected. MICHAEL MANEY'S DUSK grasps all this in 90 minutes that leaves you horrified on the edge of your seat – and terrified that it will happen to you.

John Whitmore – finely portrayed by JOHN McGLOTHLIN – wakes up one perfectly normal morning, in his perfectly normal bed, to find his wife (played by THE WALKING DEAD'S highly underrated Alisha played by JULIANA HARKAVY) suddenly kidnapped – with only an eerie recorded message and a creepy stranger, David (FORD D'APRIX) – his only way to see his wife again… Don't let the mysterious kidnapping fool you into thinking this is a variety mainstream revenge flick. Other reviewers will agree that with each chilling twist in DUSK, any more of a detailed synopsis would ruin the experience, and cheat the viewer of director MICHAEL MANEY'S mastery of it. DUSK is told in flash-backs and flash-forwards, perfectly paced, deepening each terrifying riddle with an even more chilling answer.

More of an homage to Hitchcock and old school Polanski, writer/director MICHAEL MANEY'S film works on a psychological level, with a crafty, well-written script that leaves you to decide which is more horrifying – ghosts or the ghosts of memories. With a movie like DUSK, echoes of chilling madness haunt you long after the last credit.

MONARCH HOME ENTERTAINMENT has a visceral little gem in their hands with DUSK, the type of midnight movie you don't see in movie theaters anymore. DUSK reveals the true definition of terror in its last scene, a chilling truth that's as frightening as is its opening.

'Dusk' is the kind of film that relies almost entirely on its ending to be considered a good film. It knows that it isn't made with the highest levels of quality, but it thinks that if its ending is good enough it might get away with that fact. There are after all a lot of examples of this in film history.

Unfortunately for 'Dusk' there are two problems in their case. Firstly, the film is very amateurishly made. The acting is quite terrible at times, the writing is bizarre in spots and structured painfully on occasion (mostly in the first 15 minutes) and the direction is bland and uncreative. So all this makes for not a very fun watch. However, because of the story line we know that something more is going on, something hopefully that will blow us away and make it all worth it. This is the only thing that keeps us from switching off the film altogether.

Then comes the second problem, the ending. While admittedly not bad, and while it does clear up a lot of points in the script that originally just seemed like very poor writing, it is unfortunately not enough to save 'Dusk'. You could say it saves it to an extent, but not to the levels I believe the film makers were looking for. The only people I could really recommend this to are absolute lovers of twists in films. Other than that you aren't going to get a whole lot out of this one.

To reiterate the warning, this review definitely contains spoilers. Don't read it if you want any surprises left at all. Although I must admit that even NOT reading this review will not guarantee you any surprises.

Meh. DUSK doesn't have all that much going for it. The acting is competent but not particularly inspired, though truthfully there isn't much going on in the movie in terms of thematic meat that would encourage dramatic soaring.

If you're older than about 12 then you should be familiar with the "everybody's really dead" plot line. Usually, in most variations of this plot line and indeed in this one, some violent event happens near the beginning of the movie and the primary actor or actors have actually transitioned to being dead… only they don't know it. Most of the story is devoted to tracing their progression to the realization that they have died. The big punchline at the end is we, the audience, "discover" that everybody has been dead all along with some big denouement accompanied with self-realization and a moral graduation (or failure) and so on.

Innumerable television series have featured episodes primarily consisting of this basic plot (even LOST was ultimately a variation on this theme at the end), whole movies like this one, etc. It has sometimes been executed really well as with THE OTHERS.

If you're a young person and new to the plot idea that it's okay. If it's the 800th iteration that you've seen of the same idea, not so much. Since the characters are supposed to make some sort of big emotional transition, much of what transpires throughout the movie consists of a lot of emotional biting and scratching which I suppose is intended to facilitate their inner evolution. I get enough of that in real life that I mostly found it just tiresome.

Maybe you would feel different.