Well, that’s … one way to make a movie?
Main Cast: Kristin McLaughlin, Alexandra Ackerman
Director: Richard Poche
When I was a kid, the guy across the street from my grandmother made a movie using some of the people in the neighborhood as his stars. It was badly written, obviously shot on a regular video camera he probably picked up at Wal-Mart (and I’m talking one of those old-style boxy shoulder-mounted ones), and the end result was a mess from one end to the other. I don’t know if he ever made another movie, but my advice would have been, “There’s always work at the post office.”
Richard Poche of Poche Pictures seems to have much the same luck. His second movie, A CANDLE IN THE DARK, was shot in 2002 (almost 20 years after my grandmother’s neighbor made his directorial debut), and apparently cheap moviemaking looks the same no matter what decade you’re in.
A CANDLE IN THE DARK centers on Sarah (Kirstin McLaughlin) and her first week in a new place at college. While unpacking, she sees a story on the news about a campus murder the night before, which immediately puts her on her guard. Later that night when the door starts to rattle, Sarah naturally freaks out, only to find her worries were for nothing because the intruder was only the roommate she didn’t know she had, goth girl Lilith (Alexandra Ackerman). Whew, that was a close call.
Lilith rubs Sarah the wrong way from the beginning. A little too much of a free spirit, she makes virginal Christian Sarah nervous, what with her black clothes and her night classes. And then Sarah finds pictures of all the people in her college church group in Lilith’s room. What the!? Her friends, however, assure her it’s nothing.
A day or so later, Sarah sees another story on the news about the campus security guard’s near-decapitation and then Lilith appears at the breakfast table asking Sarah to close the drapes, and then lighting up with a cheap orange lighter that looks an awful lot like the one the security guard, Frank, had. What the twice!?
Things are getting MIGHTY suspicious around here.
A CANDLE IN THE DARK is, luckily, only 40 minutes long, but holy God it’s a long 40 minutes.
I had a hard time deciding if the movie was crap because it was so badly written and these poor actors had to try to convince the audience what they were saying was coming out naturally, or if the bad script only served to enhance the absolute lack of skill in these actors.
Kirstin McLaughlin tries so hard to play the innocent survivor girl full of woe and wonder at the horrible things that are happening around her, you want to shake her by the shoulders and tell her to stop being so stupid. But I don’t think it would have helped, because I have my suspicions that that’s just how she acts the part. Sarah is the heroine of the story, so naturally she must look at everything with doe-eyed awe.
And don’t even get me started on Christy, Nicole, and Jenny, the three church group girls who keep winding up being interviewed on the news and who you can see are trying like hell not to laugh on camera because they’re supposed to be upset over the recent deaths of their friends.
Another flaw was the plausibility of the whole thing. If people on campus are winding up dead and you find pictures of your friends in your roommate’s room, a roommate you don’t trust for a second, would you really spend night #4 on the couch watching horror movies and eating chips? No. But Sarah doesn’t even bother asking a friend if she can stay with her until all this mess blows over. What the thrice!?
You can see what director Poche was going for, and I do applaud his efforts. Really, I do. But, man, the result is just such a huge friggin’ letdown; it’s hard to get past. It would be one thing if the acting was bad but the movie looked professional, or if it looked cheap and the acting ruled, but bad in both categories just makes for a really painful experience. The only time I would ever recommend watching A CANDLE IN THE DARK would be if you and your friends are simply dying to do your MST3k shtick and need a worthy movie to pick on. Then again, picking on this movie would be like picking on a kid, it’s just cruel and you’re better than that.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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