DVD
The Dark Hours

Starring: Kate Greenhouse, Gordon Currie and Iris Graham
Anchor Bay Entertainment UK
RRP: £14.99
ABD4578
Certificate: 18
Available 19 June 2006


Dr Samantha Goodman is a medical psychologist at an asylum. One patient is of particular interest to her. He is a rapist and murderer, and she repeatedly rejects his assessments. Sam suggests a weekend away with her husband, but he explains that his publishers are demanding his novel and he needs to go to their cabin retreat to finish it. But when Sam is told by her employer she is working too hard and to take the weekend off she travels to the cabin, only to find her attractive younger sister helping her husband with his work (I've never heard it called that before!). Although suspecting foul play, she is welcomed. There's little time to be suspicious before a young man knocks on the door seeking shelter from the elements and promptly pulls a gun on them, shooting the dog. As if that isn't bad enough, who should arrive but Sam's psychiatric patient with revenge on his mind in the form of a series of violent and twisted games...

I do enjoy a film that leaves you thinking at the end. It's not a new idea to have the events unfold with a number of hints, dropped clues, and moments of unreality; the Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge had the plot run its course from the separate point of view of several characters, which then overlapped until the conclusion. The Dark Hours from 2004 is different, however, in that it begins its storytelling in a linear fashion before becoming segmented into pockets of surreal unreality. At times it plays The Sixth Sense game, persuading you to think back and say: "Oh, yes, now I understand that earlier bit."

The revelation that Sam has the same incurable brain tumour as her psychotic patient makes her earlier intensity understandable. A drug which slows its growth has been banned because of the shocking behaviour it produced in mice, but Sam has been using it on the patient to watch its progress. The irritating rash on her thigh is where Sam has been injecting herself with the drug, and once we know that, nothing that happens subsequently can be fully trusted as being reality. Even when the film ends after a series of weird vignettes, we are still left with no certainty as to what really took place. All we know for sure is that the drug has affected Sam's mind.

What this film does do nicely is keep you interested by upping the stakes at every turn. Sam's problems are continually compounded, finally reaching a crescendo which puts one foot tentatively in fantasy land. Well worth a look.

Ty Power

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