Dark Was the Night Movie Review

Dark Was the Night (2014)

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Written by: Tyler Hisel
Directed by: Jack Heller
Starring: Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Steve Agee
Rated: --
Watch the trailer

Plot
A logging company inadvertently unleashes something evil upon a small town.

Verdict
It wasn't released to theaters, and it's easy to see why. The movie's color palette is too blue. Shadows and skin tones all have a blue hue. Even if you don't typically notice the color of the movie, you will notice it in this movie. It's that pronounced. It feels like a fan fiction X-Files episode stretched to a movie, and the fan fiction isn't that great.
Skip it. 

Review
This movie is heavily color graded to the point of being distracting. It looks wrong, like something is wrong with your screen. It's been heavily de-saturated and the blue cranked up. It's a terrible decision.
The movie attempts drama and backstory, but it just seems muddled and amateur. It makes a big point that the cop had a son die, but they easily could have just stated it and moved on. The movie isn't about a cop dealing with grief. Forget the backstory and focus on the monster. The tension is kept high with a mysterious presence in the town. The cop finds tracks throughout the town, but no one can identify what kind of animal could do that.

Dark Was the Night - Welcome was the end.

The movie tries hard. but it just doesn't succeed, falling back to the horror movie trope of terrible decisions. The cop finds a mauled animal in the road, has seen unidentified tracks and decides to chase after a potential wild animal or worse on foot. Genius. Instead of killing him the beast removes the mauled animal from the road. Did it want to save leftovers?

This is an X-Files episode attempt that's just not that good. I like that a hunter has a little infrared activated camera mounted in the woods that produces high quality images on photo stock paper.
These beasts have a respect for cops. It's in the cops house, but doesn't kill him. Upon exiting the house it doesn't kill the cop in the driveway either. The beast has been shown as murderous. Does it have standards or something?

The cop directs everyone to the bomb shelter in the church. That sounds plausible, right? The cop is going to tame the beast somehow. This is another case where you should not have shown the monster. Bad CGI ruins it. The monster I created in my imagination was so much better than what I saw on screen. A practical effect of a man in a suit would have been better than the CGI. It's worth noting, the beast moves super fast unless it's terrorizing people in a church. The cop shoots the beast a few times, but apparently the beasts weakness is knives. Yeah, I don't get it either. But wait, there's a twist. There wasn't just one beast, there are dozens and they are all crawling on the church exterior. Once you realize everyone is going to die, the screen cuts to black. I guess that's one way to end it.
If you want a good low-budget indie horror film, check out 30 Days of Night instead.