By Geno McGahee
How can you go wrong with Brion James? He was great in THE HORROR SHOW and SHOWDOWN and he always brought his A game and overacting style that captured the hearts of so many. In THE DARK, he’s a former FBI agent, Paul Buckner, and he’s on the trail of a beast that lives underground. It will mean a whole lot of money in his pocket if he can kill it.
Buckner’s not the only one chasing this thing. Trying to keep it alive is the hero, Gary Henderson (Stephen McHattie). He encountered the beast before and found out that it has healing abilities and should therefore be kept alive and researched to help millions. Buckner said fuckner that. That is the conflict of the film.
Gary is a badass. He goes to a diner where the waitress, Tracy (Cynthia Belliveau), is being sexually harassed by some no good bikers. Bikers are never good news. Well, when a biker in a Canadian Tuxedo (is that insensitive to call all denim a ‘Canadian Tuxedo’? If it is, please ignore it), grabs her hand and tries to force it into his crotch, Gary intervenes and throws the guy through a glass door. They don’t do that enough anymore. That action prompts the biker’s boyfriends to attack and now it’s three on one.
Tracy’s fat boss is blown away but she retrieves the gun and shoots one of them and she and Gary make their retreat. She now joins the hunt for the monster underground and falls quickly for Gary.
Meanwhile, the monster kills a cop, which is witnessed by Officer Jesse Donovan (Neve Campbell). She joins the good guys to take down the monster but Buckner is now on the scene and there is a battle. Brion James really does well as the crazy villain and when he gets really emotional, he really does crazy well. I take my hat off to him. The world lost a great actor when he passed away. RIP James…and RIP Buckner. Not surprisingly, they killed him off again. James can’t get a break. They always kill him off in movies.
THE DARK is a cool lower budget monster movie from the early 1990s. It mixes some action elements to it and moves along at a brisk pace, leading to a satisfying conclusion. I recommend it. It consumed me.
Rating: 6/10
