About JE Smith
Location: Irving, Texas
Occupation: Freelance
Bio: JE Smith, aka Jeff S., is a forty-something guy who was born in Illinois, but has been living in the wilds of Dallas, Texas for almost twenty years. He has been a movie nut ever since seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes at Steeleville Theater in 1971 and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Ultraman, Star Trek, The X Files, Batman, Spider-Man, Doc Savage and many other pop culture icons. For fifteen years (1981 - 1996) he published the sf/horror filmzine Wet Paint, and tried his hand at self-publishing his own comics with Bulletproof (1999, 3 issues) and Complex City (2000 - 2003, 4 issues and a trade paperback), both of which bombed. He's been writing film reviews for almost thirty years and is just getting the hang of it. Married to the lovely Barbara for over 15 years, and owned by a sleepy cat named Max.
Posts: 176
More from this author
Another crappy horror film ripping off Joss Whedon.
There’s no denying the cultural impact of Buffy and Angel, and one of the unhappy side effects is the proliferation of talent- and idea-challenged rip-offs such as this, which are a waste of time for all involved, especially the viewer. Darkworld, like the earlier Revamped, seems to want to launch a new series about a troubled vampire-like creature fighting against evil foes. This one has less entertainment value than your average episode of That’s So Raven, and about as much tension.
Recently killed in a botched home invasion, beautiful Fallon (Gina Valona) is resurrected and given over to a cadre of generic supernatural creatures (“We’re not vampires,” Fallon is told but we, the audience, are never clued in to exactly what they are) by her no-good father, who owes the cabal a debt. With no memory of her previous life, she becomes a soul-sucking predator, getting her scary “Angel face” on by sprouting a ridiculous pair of plastic goat horns. She is at the behest of the ostentatious Mr. Sixx (Steve Jones Watson), who in turn serves the mysterious Unnamed (Elisa Maldonado) a glowy-eyed chick who dresses like a porn star but talks like Leon Redbone. Five years later, the errant father consigns another daughter, Faith (Mara Marini) to the creatures, and Fallon is sent to collect her. Confronted with about five seconds of evidence of her former life, she not only regains all her memories, but decides to turn against Sixx and his minions. Fallon and Faith flee to a “safehouse” manned by Malachai (Jeff Swarthaut), and the rest of the flick consists of a series of tepid attacks mounted by the bad guys (standard-issue monsters including a guy with an exposed brain and a reject from GWAR), with lots of the kind of monster-on-monster hand-to-hand fighting we’re used to seeing on Buffy/Angel.
Shot on video and presented full-screen, this is just one step above those camcorder/shot-in-the-garage “movies” put out by no-name DVD outfits, which you can buy for ten bucks per metric ton at Best Buy. It all happens in two or three rooms and much of the action is overlaid with cheap video “effects” that make it look like the worst music video ever. The acting ranges from competent to horrific, with only wrestler chick Chrissy May (as the Darla-esque Scythia) having any spunk to her performance. Valona is attractive but rather wooden, and Steve Jones Watson makes a three-course meal (plus dessert and coffee) of the scenery. “Script” and “Direction” (by the aptly-named Adam Hackbarth and David Palmieri, respectively) are all but undetectable. This is awful stuff, devoid of even “so bad it’s funny” cheese value.
The screener we were sent has no special features at all (in fact, it didn’t even have a menu), because apparently Darkworld is itself a “special feature” (ironic, that) on the DVD of Darkest Hour, another direct-to-video cheapie, even though the review screeners were sent out separately. Go figure. I haven’t seen Darkest Hour, but there’s certainly no reason to buy it to get a look at Darkworld. Break out some actual Buffy or Angel instead – even reruns are preferable to this witless crap.
