The Dark Red

 The Signal is a pretty underrated anthology film from 2007 about a rage virus-style apocalypse; I liked it a lot. Out of its three creators, David Bruckner's done some other anthology films (some of which I've enjoyed) and is now doing the new Hellraiser; David Gentry's done a few indie films which honestly look pretty great (I will check them out) and Dan Bush's directed, among others, the fun but flawed The Vault (a film I don't remember much of except that I liked it right up to a really stupid ending.)

 The Dark Red is Bush's follow-up to The Vault. It's a Stephen King-style tale of people with psychic powers being victimized by a shady conspiracy that, unfortunately, doesn't work. The movie, I mean, not the conspiracy. Like The Vault, it's well-made enough to raise hopes that the good bits will make up for the rough patches and all the waffling, but it fizzles out in the end.

 It begins promisingly enough, with a social worker investigating a mobile home and finding the mother dead and a toddler locked away in a trunk. Then it cuts away to a some sort of institution where that kid, Sybil (April Billingsley), all grown-up, is locked away and is trying to convince a psychiatrist (Kelsey Scott) that she's not crazy, she has mind powers that let her read other people's minds, and that a conspiracy is trying to steal her blood so they can use those powers themselves. Oh, and that this conspiracy also stole her child from her womb. You can imagine how that goes.

 These sessions between Sybil and the psychiatrist unfortunately take up most of the movie. When not being bloated with unnecessary dialog to pad the movie's runtime (forgivable given the movie's obvious budget limitations, I guess) they serve as an exposition device as Sybil tells the story of how she met a dashing young man (scritpt co-writer Conal Byrne) at her mother's funeral, got knocked up, and then was betrayed by him as he handed him over to his 'family', the seemingly mom-and-pop illuminati that is trying to harvest her psychic blood (of an unknown blood type... really?) for their own gain.

 Sybil's drugged escape from the remote cabin and underground tunnels that serve as the conspiracy's headquarters is the movie's highlight - badass and suspenseful - and it sets up high expectations for the climax.

 Unfortunately the rest of the film consists of Sybil preparing and executing a stupid, stupid plan to get her baby back. Seriously, it's incredibly fucking dumb. But it works flawlessly, so she gets to the cabin and faces down the world's shittiest, least menacing psychic new-world-order conspiracy ever.
 Again, you've got to take the budget in consideration here, but still - they had a few more extras for other scenes, using them here to punch up the finale with a higher body count would have done wonders.

 As it is, by failing to deliver even a mildly satisfying payoff and not providing any consistency or believability to the reach and menace of the conspiracy or the powers of the bloodline, the movie ends up being extremely underwhelming. It reminded me more than anything else of Joe Begos's The Mind's Eye, a similarly Stephen King derived psychic fantasy that had a lot more fun with the premise on what was probably a fraction of this one's budget.

 The acting is kind of stilted in a very... "I'm a serious actor being all serious in a very serious role" way, in keeping with the films overtly sombre mood - not bad, necessarily, but not a lot to latch on to there. There are very little special effects to speak of, but what's there (the decomposing corpse at the beginning, a couple of bloody scenes) were very well done.

 So... yeah, I'd avoid this one.