30 July 2017

LEFT FILMS PRESENTS: DARKNESS WAKES. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.


DARKNESS WAKES aka CHARLOTTE WAKES. (2017) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY SIMON RICHARDSON. STARRING AISLING KNIGHT, RICHARD KILGOUR, JILL BUCHANAN, SAMANTHA SCHNITZLER AND BJORN FRANKLIN.

'When night falls, darkness wakes...'

'Rosemary's Baby meets House Of The Devil by way of Burnt Offerings in this wickedly chilling beast of a movie!'
Sandra Harris, CINEHOUSE.

I love films like this. You know, where someone, usually a pretty young college girl, answers an ad for baby-sitting or granny-sitting or cat-sitting, but then it turns out that the weird couple looking for the baby-sitter or granny-sitter or cat-sitter are just minions of the devil and what they're really looking for is a beautiful young virgin to have Satan's baby...? Yeah, we've all seen films like this, and they never get old.

It's my favourite sub-genre of horror film, along with the ones where an unsuspecting young couple moves into a charming old house in New England, never dreaming that it was the site of a witches' coven back in the days of the Salem Witch Trials, and now the women accused unjustly of being witches (wasn't that ALL of them...?) and burned at the stake are mighty pissed off and looking for revenge from the new house-owners?

DARKNESS WAKES offers its own spin on the baby-sitter theme. Charlotte is a pretty young student who applies to cat-sit for the weirdest couple for a period of one weekend, for which she'll be paid the kind of money that, as a presumably impoverished student, she can't afford to turn down.

The weird couple in this case, the Farrows (Mia Farrow played the lead role of Satan's womb-for-rent in Roman Polanski's superb horror offering, ROSEMARY'S BABY), are, like, super-weird. Mr. Farrow in particular, played by an actor with the splendidly ghoulish surname of 'Kilgour,' seems to be doing his best to channel his inner Boris Karloff as he outlines the piffling few rules and duties to which Charlotte will have to adhere during the course of her short stay.

He magnanimously tells Charlotte that she'll have the full and free run of their well-stocked wine cellar while she's staying in Creepy Towers. That's practically unheard-of for house-sitters, baby-sitters and cat-sitters alike. They're normally discouraged from boozing it up while on the job.

I'd gladly cat-sit for any couple who offered me such perks. Hell, I'd even be their bloody cat for that kind of largesse. They could call me Tiddles, tickle my tum-tum, put drops in my peepers and even lace my nosh with worming powder for that kind of delicious liquid bonus, I'll tell you that for nothing.

Anyway, Charlotte certainly makes good use of her cat-sitting privileges while she's staying at the Farrows. The booze must be lethal stuff, though, because she has the most horrific nightmares during her stay.

Nightmares in which a terrible hooded beast with savage claws comes to her in the dead of night and makes free with her virginal white body, still untouched by man despite the best efforts of Charlotte's randy boyfriend Seth and the encouragement of her slutty friend Kate.

The house is super-creepy, the hooded demon terrifying and the atmosphere claustrophobic and eerily stifling as poor Charlotte desperately tries to separate nightmare from reality in the house that Satan surely built. Using demon contractors, haha. And slave labour, natch...!

There's tons of gratuitous female nudity for male viewers to goggle at lustily as well, as the house seems to bring out the hussy in the prim and proper bespectacled Charlotte. If you like
watching demon sex and ogling nice breasts and things, then you'll find plenty to enjoy in DARKNESS WAKES, which is coming to DVD/VOD in August 2017 courtesy of the nice peeps at LEFT FILMS.

The only thing that bothers me about these films is this: Why does Satan, who's supposed to be all-powerful and stuff, have to advertise for women to have his spawn in the feeble guise of looking for a baby-sitter, etc.? Maybe it's because, if the women answering the ads knew what he really wanted them for, they'd fully expect to be stiffed on the child support. He is Satan, after all...

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:


http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com







1 comment:

  1. How many sexy scenes are we talking about? I enjoy my horror old school

    ReplyDelete