This film is a case of being able to perfectly judge a book by its cover. The opening credits say this film is "Johannes Roberts's Darkhunters". Yes. Roberts's, not Roberts'. That no one involved with this movie, including writer/director Johannes Roberts, was smart or just attentive enough to catch that punctuation mistake says it all. Darkhunters is delightfully bad.
The suckitude begins almost at once as the story lapses into a flashback after the opening scene, but then goes into a flashback within that flashback. I t doesn't stop there, however, as there are repeated flashbacks within the flashback within the flashback. After briefly introducing us to the main character, the story then focuses on a completely different and seemingly unrelated person for the next 15 minutes. I thought there'd been some sort of editing problem and another film got spliced into this one by mistake. The plot is also dominated by three of the longest and worst conversations you'll ever see in any motion picture. One is so confusing you'd need a Venn Diagram to understand what's being said, another feels like a maze where writer/director Roberts got lost inside his own script and couldn't find a way out. As for the third well, you know those scenes where two people are face to face while the camera spins around them? That's how the third conversation is filmed, except the camera keeps spinning around them for two and a half minutes. I'm not sarcastically exaggerating. I actually timed it out.
But, wait! It gets worse. About a third of this movie is nothing more that slo-mo images of feline frolicking, like a complimentary DVD you get for subscribing to Cat Fancy magazine. Then there's a scene in a dog pound that resembles a TV commercial from the Humane Society. Lead actress Susan Paterno is so awful, they would have been better off casting college football coach Joe Paterno in drag. Lead actor Dominique Pinon looks like a little person somehow blown up to regular size. In one of the most inexplicable career decisions of all time, legitimate Hollywood actor Jeff Fahey shows up as a demon in dire need of lip balm and a manicure. Another demon shows up that speaks in an unintelligible garble, but is given subtitles that make him sound like a slightly peeved accountant.
I could go on and on about all the absurdly terrible things in this motion picture. What amplifies the crap factor into "so bad it's good" territory is that so many of those absurdly terrible things are repeated over and over again, making it crystal clear that no one involved with this production knew their ass from their elbow. If you and your friends tried to turn Darkhunters into a drinking game, they'd find you all dead the next day from alcohol poisoning.
The story itself is basically the secret origin of Carol Miller (Susan Paterno), a woman chosen by God to kill ghosts by shooting them in the chest with bullets. They are ghosts who have been forgotten about through some sort of divine administrative mistake, ghosts who are invisible to the naked eye yet have enough physical substance to do things like drive cars. Miller has to track down these ghosts and shoot them before demons show up to claim their souls for some sort of supernatural black market. And yes, when the ghosts are shot, they bleed and fall to the floor like corpses.
Johannes Roberts's Darkhunters is one of the most awesomely, hilariously bad things I've ever seen. If that's what you're in the mood for, there isn't a much better example of it than this movie.
The suckitude begins almost at once as the story lapses into a flashback after the opening scene, but then goes into a flashback within that flashback. I t doesn't stop there, however, as there are repeated flashbacks within the flashback within the flashback. After briefly introducing us to the main character, the story then focuses on a completely different and seemingly unrelated person for the next 15 minutes. I thought there'd been some sort of editing problem and another film got spliced into this one by mistake. The plot is also dominated by three of the longest and worst conversations you'll ever see in any motion picture. One is so confusing you'd need a Venn Diagram to understand what's being said, another feels like a maze where writer/director Roberts got lost inside his own script and couldn't find a way out. As for the third well, you know those scenes where two people are face to face while the camera spins around them? That's how the third conversation is filmed, except the camera keeps spinning around them for two and a half minutes. I'm not sarcastically exaggerating. I actually timed it out.
But, wait! It gets worse. About a third of this movie is nothing more that slo-mo images of feline frolicking, like a complimentary DVD you get for subscribing to Cat Fancy magazine. Then there's a scene in a dog pound that resembles a TV commercial from the Humane Society. Lead actress Susan Paterno is so awful, they would have been better off casting college football coach Joe Paterno in drag. Lead actor Dominique Pinon looks like a little person somehow blown up to regular size. In one of the most inexplicable career decisions of all time, legitimate Hollywood actor Jeff Fahey shows up as a demon in dire need of lip balm and a manicure. Another demon shows up that speaks in an unintelligible garble, but is given subtitles that make him sound like a slightly peeved accountant.
I could go on and on about all the absurdly terrible things in this motion picture. What amplifies the crap factor into "so bad it's good" territory is that so many of those absurdly terrible things are repeated over and over again, making it crystal clear that no one involved with this production knew their ass from their elbow. If you and your friends tried to turn Darkhunters into a drinking game, they'd find you all dead the next day from alcohol poisoning.
The story itself is basically the secret origin of Carol Miller (Susan Paterno), a woman chosen by God to kill ghosts by shooting them in the chest with bullets. They are ghosts who have been forgotten about through some sort of divine administrative mistake, ghosts who are invisible to the naked eye yet have enough physical substance to do things like drive cars. Miller has to track down these ghosts and shoot them before demons show up to claim their souls for some sort of supernatural black market. And yes, when the ghosts are shot, they bleed and fall to the floor like corpses.
Johannes Roberts's Darkhunters is one of the most awesomely, hilariously bad things I've ever seen. If that's what you're in the mood for, there isn't a much better example of it than this movie.