Thirty-One Days O’Horror: Dark Country (2009)

Let’s Ride #28!

Thomas Jane stars in 2009’s Dark Country, a film in which he also makes his directorial debut. The film was written by Tab Murphy and and features Lauren German and Ron Perlman in supporting roles. The movie was shot in 3D which, in my opinion, heavily limits the film’s style and also shows the limitations of the film’s CGI. Jane appears to have drawn heavy influence from The Twilight Zone, pulp novels, and film noir.

The film opens with Jane (as Dick) and German (as Gina), freshly wed and barely acquaintances, heading out on the road from Las Vegas on their honeymoon. Traveling by night, they quickly find themselves lost on a highway that seemingly goes nowhere. They soon come upon a one vehicle accident and place the lone survivor, a man with wounds so bad that his face is disfigured, in their backseat with the intention of bringing him to a hospital. As they rack up miles on the lonesome road, however, the survivor becomes agitated with the couple, Dick in particular, and Dick ends up killing him in self defense. They bury his body out in the desert, but when they come upon a rest stop and clean themselves up from the struggle with the stranger, Dick realizes that he lost his watch in the desert and must go back for it. From this point on, the film attempts to goes full Twilight Zone and attempts to drum up confusion, fear, and desperation. It fails. Watch the film for yourself to find out what happens.

I applaud Jane for making this film. He definitely has film noir down to a science. From the heavy narration at the beginning of the film to the different shot perspectives, Jane knows the genre well. That said, shooting the film in 3D was a mistake in my opinion. As I stated before, it revealed the limitations of the special effects and CGI with glaring clarity. A lot of the scenes look very fake, and jar the viewer out of the story. As far as the story is concerned, it doesn’t explore any new territory and, unfortunately, doesn’t add anything to the dark genre, either. It’s a serviceable enough film, but I don’t necessarily recommend it.

Dark Country had potential, it was just executed poorly. If you enjoy film noir, you may want to check this flick out for yourself. Ron Perlman’s role is small and comes close to the end of the film, but even his acting chops can’t save Dark Country from being a disappointment.

Thanks for checking out my review!