Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Of the three movies I have seen from Night Light Films, "Passed the Door of Darkness" is without doubt the best. The screenplay this time around tries to be a little thoughtful, dealing with some serious themes. Some of the acting by the no-name cast is also pretty decent. And the movie does display some seriously messy corpses here and there. However, all of that is not enough to save the movie. Like other Night Light productions, the movie is seriously cheap, ranging from tacky sets to inadequate lighting (why doesn't anyone turn on a light in this movie?) The so-called twist ending will no doubt be guessed by most viewers long before it happens. However, the biggest problem with the movie is that it's way too long and drawn out. While it doesn't get to the point of being seriously boring, viewers will repeatedly be telling the movie to simply get on with it - that is, if they don't turn off this Night Light long before it ends.

I don't believe that I have ever left a review here before, but having just watched this film, and reading some of the reviews, I felt like I needed to chime in. I have to say that I was actually intrigued for the entire running time. Yes it's something of a slow-burn pot boiler, but it never seemed "slow". The pacing kept me interested in what was coming and how it was going to unfold. It kept me guessing but I was never confused as to what was going on.As for the acting, I thought that most everybody gave excellent showings. I'm not sure where the negative reviews on performances are coming from, but everyone, especially Mark Colson, did a great job. The lead, Matthew Prater, was OK. He was at his best when doing scenes that required him to let loose and get angry, which come to think of it, was most of the time. Kathryn Avery Hansen as detective MacCasey's daughter also shined bright in this piece. James M. Connor as Stephens--again, top notch.I have this on one of those 20 horror film collections and, while a number of the movies in there are abysmal, this one was something of standout for me. Sure it's low budget, sure the print is a little dark in some places and the audio is a bit low at times, but there is nonetheless some great talent in both storytelling and performance here. Also, the death scenes are pretty darn well edited and look quite real. If you like crime thrillers, I definitely think that Passed The Door Of Darkness is worth a viewing.

Passed the Door of Darkness starts as rookie detective Chris Malloy (Matthew Prater) fresh faced & just out of school begins his first day on the job, he is teamed up with his idol the hard nosed cynical detective Murphy MacCasey (co-writer Mark Colson) who has seen it all over the years. They are called to a terrible scene, a house where a man & his two children lay dead, then soon after another bizarre crime scene faces them when MacCasey's daughter Laura (Kathryn Avery Hansen) has the unfortunate experience of walking into her house & blowing her boyfriends head off with a shotgun that was rigged to go off as the door was opened. A killer is on the loose, a killer who sets deadly traps that innocent people set off & kill someone close to them thus turning them into killers. It's up to MacCasey & Malloy to find the killer before they strike again but there may be more to the case than they first thought as suspicion's turn closer to home...Co-written & directed by Peter Mervis under the pseudonym Traxler Mervis I got the impression that Passed the Door of Darkness was trying to be a Se7en (1995) or a The Silence of the Lambs (1991) style serial killer mystery thriller but doesn't have any of the things that made those two films absolute solid gold classics & is a rather miserable overlong little film in it's own right. First of all I have no idea why it's called Passed the Door of Darkness as there's no doors in it & there's nothing supernatural in it either. The script is poor here with the serial killer aspects all but disappearing in the second half as it focuses on the relationship between MacCasey, his daughter & Malloy which is deathly dull & when the film does kick back into serial killer thriller mode there's a ridiculous twist ending which is barely explained & makes no sense like why didn't he remember committing the murders before but suddenly does or why he then decides to almost randomly commit suicide himself or what his motives were. It smacks of a twist ending for the sake of a twist ending because that's what an audience would expect with very little thought behind it & ultimately I don't think it works or satisfies on a dramatic level. The character's are awful with some of the worst clichés I've seen in a while, I mean the fresh faced young idealistic cop right out of college who thinks he knows everything gets paired up with an embittered cynical veteran who teaches the kid the realities of life, oh please come on as if we haven't seen this a thousand times before & here it's very poorly realised with paper thin characterisation which is another reason why the twist ending just falls flat & feels stupid.There's a couple of mildly gory moments here, a man has his face blown off, there's a decapitated head, a woman has her arm chopped off with a machete & then the wound is burned closed before a bomb is placed in her mouth & her head goes bang. I have actually probably made it sound gorier than it is & the film doesn't focus on the gore or the murders that much & at times you can forget your watching a film that's supposed to be about a serial killer. There definitely nothing scary here & the entire film looks like a cheap point & shoot made for telly effort with no style whatsoever.I would have though Passed the Door of Darkness was a low budget film & the production values are cheap with a cop station that consists of two rooms & no cops other than the two detectives are ever seen there. The acting is really poor here which just makes the thing even more of a chore to sit through & means it has even less impact.Passed the Door the Darkness is a boring serial killer thriller with bad character's, a bad twist ending & it feels like it goes on forever while your watching it. The thriller elements are rubbish, the horror elements are crap & the sub soap opera style dramatics are just dull. One to avoid.

The premise of this movie sounded pretty good. In fact, I'm going to quote the TV guide information:"Brutal serial 'chiller'. A crazed psychopath leads detectives on a trail of blood-curdling death as he turns normally stable citizens into killers in the most gruesome fashions imaginable." Now what does that sound like? Does it sound like this murderer has the ability to turn people crazy, homicidal even? Well that's what I expected, but no. This is one in a long line of movies trying to cash in on the success of Saw with a killer who has a message to deliver to his victims, except this killer's MO is to put people in "traps" that will kill them when their family members open the door, suspecting nothing wrong.Maybe that doesn't sound so bad. I mean with so many people trying to cash in on Saw the laws of averages suggest some have to have some talent.Too bad the killer doesn't have too much to do with this movie. All I can say without spoiling things is that the older detective has some unrelated issues, and that's what the second half of the movie ends up focusing on.