Deep in the Darkness
Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 10:26 pm
Synopsis:
The stupidest physician you can possibly imagine (he makes Ben Carson look clever) moves his wife and kid into some tiny-ass, sleepy town where they don't even get cable.
Review:
This apparently was a book 9 years before it was a flick, and won the Bram Stoker award. I guess that means it's 50% dense prose describing the atmosphere and setting, 40% dense prose describing characters, and 10% throwaway, clumsy prose describing the real action. That would explain why it produced one of the stupidest fucking screenplays with the most WTF out of left field plot twists since I crucified Sometimes They Come Back For More. As such this review WILL contain spoilers but you won't care because FUCK this movie.
Dr. Ben Carson moves to some town with his wife because only other other doc in town wants to sell the house and practice and leave. They do so readily and at a cheap price. Local resident Dean Stockwell (perhaps separated from Scott Bakula) takes Ben aside and tells him how shit works around this berg. People have ... ahem, certain beliefs and practices that must be maintained, and it's unhealthy to go against that. In spite of receiving this mafia-like greeting, Dr. Ben sticks around. He meets Dean's wife, who looks like a grizzly bear pimp-slapped her a couple times.
The next day, a normal, sane, reasonable person would say things went off the rails. At the town soiree, Dean takes Dr. Ben aside to this secluded spot in the woods and explains what some of these customs are. He'll be required to perform regular animal sacrifices at an altar to appease the race of primitive wildmen that inhabit the woods, caves, and tunnels around town. Dr. Ben turns this down because it probably sounds strange to him. You know what sounds strange to me? What happens next. A package arrives for Dr. Ben, presumably so he can carry on his research that involves the deadliest motherfucking diseases known to mankind, including ebola, the bubonic plague, and at least ten others. Picture this: you're the delivery guy assigned to take this package, replete with biohazard stamps, to a two- or three-hundred person town out in the middle of nowhere. You aren't a specialized courier, you work for UPS. You're supposed to hand it to this guy at his house -- not a military base, not the CDC, not even a fucking halfway-decently stocked chem laboratory run by Darkman out of the back of a defunct warehouse that still at least has a fence to keep people out. Except he isn't there, he's at the town party, so you leave it on his fucking doorstep. Alright, fine. The most incompetent yet luckiest Forrest Gump clone in the universe gets the death box to its destination without spilling or compromising the contents. Dr. Ben picks it up and puts it away. Where? Does he have a lab in his basement cellar or garage? Nope. He's got an office with a mini-fridge, though. I assume he leaves it unlocked and totally unsecured so his 8-year old daughter can play tea party with the vials. I'm shocked he doesn't hang a banner outside that says, "LETHAL BACTERIAL AND VIRAL SAMPLES ON DISPLAY -- $0.25 PER GANDER -- OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK."
Shit goes south further when his wife begs him to have another child. She's already hanging out with the town, I guess "respected elder" is the best term, who happens to be a creepy-ass 50-something women that looks like she stepped straight out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne book adapted by H.P. Lovecraft. His wife starts spending entirely too much time at church-related activities headed up by said creepy-ass woman, Lady Zellus (remember that name), who also "speaks for the wildmen" as their rep, I suppose. Since Lady Z is also the midwife (because fuck hospitals in this town), Mrs. Ben is spending almost all her spare time with her. Meanwhile, Dr. Ben still isn't playing ball with Dean and the other citizens, so the wildmen personally pay him a visit. Turns out they have to cut him slack even though he hasn't murdered any animals for them. They need him for basic medical care among their kind, but they're notoriously shitty patients. Whatever injections he gives to them, he must first give to himself in a small quantity so they know he's not poisoning them. On the plus side, whenever one of them dies, they happily cannibalize the remains with no hard feelings. During on of these trips, the wildmen force Dr. Ben to kill Dean Stockwell because they're sadistic douchebags and he and his grandson have been mouthing off and bitching ever since their more independent minded family members got disappeared. Dr. Ben goes back and hooks up with Dean's grandkid and hatches a plan to get all four of them out of Dodge.
This plan goes like shit and gets the grandkid killed even though there's only one pig between them and freedom. Mrs. Ben is at the wheel of the minivan. Mind you she's already run the pig off the road once. He somehow gets around in front of them but she won't run the gauntlet a second time -- a gauntlet of one 60-year old motherfucker standing outside his 1986 Chevy patrol car. She turns the car around and heads back to FUCKING TOWN. Grandkid gets jumped by the wildmen immediately since he's KOS. They still refuse to murder Dr. Ben because, hell, he is the only doc in town. Now he hatches his most brilliant fucktarded plan of all. While getaway plan A worked about as well as Dr. House's initial diagnosis, getaway plan B is guaranteed to work. Dr. Ben and Co. managed to kill a wildman, so they drag his corpse back into the office ... which you'll remember holds the shrine to the Horseman of the Apocalypse, Pestilence, in the form of a mini-fridge containing a dozen vials for which any madman from any psycho terrorist cell would murder dozens of people. With no lab-grade equipment, only glorified toilet-cleaner gloves for safety, and under enormous time and emotional restrictions, he conducts experiments and determines the wildmen are most susceptible to the black death.
The bubonic plague, even with proper antibiotics and support will still kill your ass 15% of the time if you're a healthy adult. Proper support includes oxygen, intravenous fluids, and bedrest in a clean, sanitary environment with access to plenty of trained professionals in case shit gets real. It can take up to four to five days for symptoms to appear and as many as ten days to kill someone. With that info in mind...
Dr. Ben's daughter gets kidnapped by the cave people and he gets called in to ply his trade. Having previously dosed himself with meds, he proceeds to poison the patient with plague. That quickly finishes him off and the wildmen start eating the dead dude. Dr. Ben locates his daughter in the cave and also inoculates her. He passes out against the cave wall for an undetermined period of time, but it's long enough for the entire clan of cannibals to be dead or too weakened by their final death throes to matter. You might think this stupidest part of the flick, but wait ... there's more. After what could have been up to two weeks spent in a semi-conscience stupor with no food, water, or medical care in a filthy, damp, petri dish of a cave where cannibals butcher and eat raw meat regularly, Dr. Ben makes it back to his house where his wife is about to give birth. He learns at the moment that Lady Zellus is half wildman and his new kid is going to be the replacement "speaker for the wildmen." After much adieu, Dr. Ben rushes downstairs and knocks over a photo of his wife at a very young age. I can only presume he's had this sitting on his mantle for at least long as his first kid's been alive, so we'll say a minimum of 7-8 years. It's an image of her standing in front of a house. Off to the side there's a mailbox with the name "Zellus" on it. I shit you fucking not.
Fin.
Verdict:
Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill is scarier and more suspenseful in every way.
The stupidest physician you can possibly imagine (he makes Ben Carson look clever) moves his wife and kid into some tiny-ass, sleepy town where they don't even get cable.
Review:
This apparently was a book 9 years before it was a flick, and won the Bram Stoker award. I guess that means it's 50% dense prose describing the atmosphere and setting, 40% dense prose describing characters, and 10% throwaway, clumsy prose describing the real action. That would explain why it produced one of the stupidest fucking screenplays with the most WTF out of left field plot twists since I crucified Sometimes They Come Back For More. As such this review WILL contain spoilers but you won't care because FUCK this movie.
Dr. Ben Carson moves to some town with his wife because only other other doc in town wants to sell the house and practice and leave. They do so readily and at a cheap price. Local resident Dean Stockwell (perhaps separated from Scott Bakula) takes Ben aside and tells him how shit works around this berg. People have ... ahem, certain beliefs and practices that must be maintained, and it's unhealthy to go against that. In spite of receiving this mafia-like greeting, Dr. Ben sticks around. He meets Dean's wife, who looks like a grizzly bear pimp-slapped her a couple times.
The next day, a normal, sane, reasonable person would say things went off the rails. At the town soiree, Dean takes Dr. Ben aside to this secluded spot in the woods and explains what some of these customs are. He'll be required to perform regular animal sacrifices at an altar to appease the race of primitive wildmen that inhabit the woods, caves, and tunnels around town. Dr. Ben turns this down because it probably sounds strange to him. You know what sounds strange to me? What happens next. A package arrives for Dr. Ben, presumably so he can carry on his research that involves the deadliest motherfucking diseases known to mankind, including ebola, the bubonic plague, and at least ten others. Picture this: you're the delivery guy assigned to take this package, replete with biohazard stamps, to a two- or three-hundred person town out in the middle of nowhere. You aren't a specialized courier, you work for UPS. You're supposed to hand it to this guy at his house -- not a military base, not the CDC, not even a fucking halfway-decently stocked chem laboratory run by Darkman out of the back of a defunct warehouse that still at least has a fence to keep people out. Except he isn't there, he's at the town party, so you leave it on his fucking doorstep. Alright, fine. The most incompetent yet luckiest Forrest Gump clone in the universe gets the death box to its destination without spilling or compromising the contents. Dr. Ben picks it up and puts it away. Where? Does he have a lab in his basement cellar or garage? Nope. He's got an office with a mini-fridge, though. I assume he leaves it unlocked and totally unsecured so his 8-year old daughter can play tea party with the vials. I'm shocked he doesn't hang a banner outside that says, "LETHAL BACTERIAL AND VIRAL SAMPLES ON DISPLAY -- $0.25 PER GANDER -- OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK."
Shit goes south further when his wife begs him to have another child. She's already hanging out with the town, I guess "respected elder" is the best term, who happens to be a creepy-ass 50-something women that looks like she stepped straight out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne book adapted by H.P. Lovecraft. His wife starts spending entirely too much time at church-related activities headed up by said creepy-ass woman, Lady Zellus (remember that name), who also "speaks for the wildmen" as their rep, I suppose. Since Lady Z is also the midwife (because fuck hospitals in this town), Mrs. Ben is spending almost all her spare time with her. Meanwhile, Dr. Ben still isn't playing ball with Dean and the other citizens, so the wildmen personally pay him a visit. Turns out they have to cut him slack even though he hasn't murdered any animals for them. They need him for basic medical care among their kind, but they're notoriously shitty patients. Whatever injections he gives to them, he must first give to himself in a small quantity so they know he's not poisoning them. On the plus side, whenever one of them dies, they happily cannibalize the remains with no hard feelings. During on of these trips, the wildmen force Dr. Ben to kill Dean Stockwell because they're sadistic douchebags and he and his grandson have been mouthing off and bitching ever since their more independent minded family members got disappeared. Dr. Ben goes back and hooks up with Dean's grandkid and hatches a plan to get all four of them out of Dodge.
This plan goes like shit and gets the grandkid killed even though there's only one pig between them and freedom. Mrs. Ben is at the wheel of the minivan. Mind you she's already run the pig off the road once. He somehow gets around in front of them but she won't run the gauntlet a second time -- a gauntlet of one 60-year old motherfucker standing outside his 1986 Chevy patrol car. She turns the car around and heads back to FUCKING TOWN. Grandkid gets jumped by the wildmen immediately since he's KOS. They still refuse to murder Dr. Ben because, hell, he is the only doc in town. Now he hatches his most brilliant fucktarded plan of all. While getaway plan A worked about as well as Dr. House's initial diagnosis, getaway plan B is guaranteed to work. Dr. Ben and Co. managed to kill a wildman, so they drag his corpse back into the office ... which you'll remember holds the shrine to the Horseman of the Apocalypse, Pestilence, in the form of a mini-fridge containing a dozen vials for which any madman from any psycho terrorist cell would murder dozens of people. With no lab-grade equipment, only glorified toilet-cleaner gloves for safety, and under enormous time and emotional restrictions, he conducts experiments and determines the wildmen are most susceptible to the black death.
The bubonic plague, even with proper antibiotics and support will still kill your ass 15% of the time if you're a healthy adult. Proper support includes oxygen, intravenous fluids, and bedrest in a clean, sanitary environment with access to plenty of trained professionals in case shit gets real. It can take up to four to five days for symptoms to appear and as many as ten days to kill someone. With that info in mind...
Dr. Ben's daughter gets kidnapped by the cave people and he gets called in to ply his trade. Having previously dosed himself with meds, he proceeds to poison the patient with plague. That quickly finishes him off and the wildmen start eating the dead dude. Dr. Ben locates his daughter in the cave and also inoculates her. He passes out against the cave wall for an undetermined period of time, but it's long enough for the entire clan of cannibals to be dead or too weakened by their final death throes to matter. You might think this stupidest part of the flick, but wait ... there's more. After what could have been up to two weeks spent in a semi-conscience stupor with no food, water, or medical care in a filthy, damp, petri dish of a cave where cannibals butcher and eat raw meat regularly, Dr. Ben makes it back to his house where his wife is about to give birth. He learns at the moment that Lady Zellus is half wildman and his new kid is going to be the replacement "speaker for the wildmen." After much adieu, Dr. Ben rushes downstairs and knocks over a photo of his wife at a very young age. I can only presume he's had this sitting on his mantle for at least long as his first kid's been alive, so we'll say a minimum of 7-8 years. It's an image of her standing in front of a house. Off to the side there's a mailbox with the name "Zellus" on it. I shit you fucking not.
Fin.
Verdict:
Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill is scarier and more suspenseful in every way.