In the Dark (2000)

Librarian Jane (Kim Garrett) lives the bored small town lifestyle, the sort of thing that can predispose a woman to start on a series of bad decisions for the simple hell of it. So when she begins to find a series of notes from someone calling themselves the “Master of Games” she doesn’t really hesitate to follow the instructions on them. After all, doing so always leads to an envelope full of money.

Of course, what starts off as a series of simple tests of courage escalates with the increasing amount of money in those envelopes, moving towards minor criminality, through major criminality and right into a maximal fucked-upness of a kind that more than just suggests the possibility of a very dark endgame for Jane.

This pretty incredible piece of shot on video horror by Clifton Holmes, adapting a novel by smut horror royalty Richard Laymon has never been officially released but has been making the rounds for quite some time in form of burned DVD-Rs, and a YouTube stream. I do hope the lovely people of Bleeding Skull or of Vinegar Syndrome will catch this one sooner or later.

As it stands, the air of mild secrecy and grime does fit this particular film rather well – one would expect the Master of Games to spread their unpleasant gospel this way.

This is one of those uncommon SOV films that appear to know exactly what they want aesthetically – the often excellent camera work adds to the air of obscure and forbidden reality, and the editing is of a kin that regularly breaks the rules of the game to make an actual thematic point. Unlike with many SOV movies, shots here are thoroughly composed and expressive beyond the air of grime, the black and white of the footage emphasising the shadows in this indeed shadowy tale, providing a nightmarish shape to the film’s crazier moments that don’t quite seem to fit into reality as we know it without ever actually going the supernatural route.

There’s also great focus and pacing here, with no wasted shot, certainly no superfluous scenes. We are accompanying Jane on her descend into an abyss that won’t stop at merely looking back at her, and the way down isn’t filled with scenes of people dragging their feet.

In the Dark works particularly well as an exploration of a specific kind of dissociative small town ennui, where what appears as the way out of the capitalist trap – or at least as relief from its eternal fucking boredom – drags one down into something that’s very much of the same kind, though perhaps eventually a little more honest, if even less pleasant.

While the acting here isn’t always great – this is still an SOV movie, if a brilliant one – Kim Garrett is absolutely fantastic, showing Jane’s alienation, her quiet desperation and all the emotions she never quite can’t suppress, and since she’s the absolute centre of the film, she’s also another part of the motor that makes In the Dark work as astonishingly well as it does.