Very well executed

Good movie but grossly overrated

As Good As It Gets

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The best actors in Hollywood need to get that big role before their career can take off. No matter how good they are, until they find that role, they won't be a household name and are forced to take whatever roles they can get. Even megastars, like Chris Pratt got his start on a low rated CW drama, and did B-movies for a decade before he was cast as Star Lord, this is the position Keir Gilchrist finds himself in now. Gilchrist is an exceptional young actor, who always gives his best, but without that big role on his resume, he's forced to take jobs like this one. Dark Summer follows Daniel, (Gilchrist) a 17 year old who has recently been sentenced to house arrest for stalking a girl from his school. To make matters worse, his parents are away for the summer and Daniel is all alone. As boredom ware away at him mind, Daniel starts to see things and wonders if he's being punished for his crimes by some supernatural entity, or if he's just going insane from boredom. For much of this movie, the actor is bored, and if the actor is bored, what do you think the audience is feeling? Daniel's days are filled with monotonous discussions with friends, who sneak over, and of course investigations that turn up nothing. As for his nights, they are filled with a lot of jump scares and loud noises that again ultimately turn up nothing, as Dark Summer is just one of those films where nothing happens until the last twenty minutes, and by then, who really cares anymore? The bottom line, even a great actor couldn't save this film, it's your typical supernatural horror film, filled with a lot of jump scares, good looking people, and a whole lot of nothing else until the very end.

The major problem is when you have a movie centred practically around one actor, he or she must have enough charisma and interest to keep you hooked, unfortunately Keir Gilchrist just does not carry it off. He is not helped by some really over down close ups, nearly every scene is pan, close up. The whole film lacks pace and tension and your interest wanders off, at one point I was thinking he needs a decent meal in him as he looked painfully thin. I was also thinking how come there is no parental supervision for a young lad under house arrest. A bit slow, one or two frights, redeeming point the haunting 'When' by Elysian Fields as a background track.

Well, that was a mixed ride. From a decent horror concept, Dark Summer had some excellent sound design, really good cinematography and a perfect soundtrack of songs from Elysian Field On the other hand, the script was nothing more than mediocre. The directing was pretty poor, casting and acting in itself really awful.Dark Summer could just as well have ended up very good, if all those moments had been addressed. Instead, it ended up as somewhat of an annoyance to me personally. In the end, the rating of 5 does not really mean that I found it bland. Sooner the opposite. Some elements were closer to strong 8s, other closer to 2s. It's a pity, really.SMALL SPOILERAnd yeah, Stormare was good, as always. Just very, very wrongly cast, as his presence in itself says that his seemingly insignificant character really plays a somewhat larger part.

So let me start off by saying that this was a decent film in the end. But it DOES take until the end to vindicate the dull hour that precedes it. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to watch what I consider dull or predictable parts of films. I figure that's the joy of watching at home instead of the theater. So you have to know that this is a predictable movie in terms of relationships. It's evident early on that there's unrequited love going on and that is a big part of the film. Since this is the single most obvious part of the plot and for some reason takes up almost half the film, feel free to skip it all once you recognize the relationship. You'll see it within the first 5 minutes. After that is a lot of nothing mixed in with scares intermittently as is expected in a horror film. It's not too gory and there are some decent creepy moments throughout. Why the high rating, you may ask. It's all in the ending! This is one of those rare movies where I didn't see the end coming and that made all the fast forwarding worth it. Also, other reviewers said the movie was dark. I will say that I did not have that trouble with watching it on Netflix. Platform differences maybe?