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After shooting dead a woman, a female psychologist confesses
to a priest. In the back story we see a man drive to a school
for his teaching job. Outside he is slightly injured after
being bustled by some older boys. Splashing water on his face
in the washroom, he is amazed to find he has only a partial
reflection. Returning home, he demands to know if his wife
can see him, but she simply becomes hysterical and so he flees
the house. Meanwhile, the psychologist is speaking to a patient
who is convinced she is not insane. The patient's husband
had been in a coma for five years, after a road accident they
were in, and she visited the hospital everyday to check on
his progress. However, she arrived one day to find he's perfectly
healthy and it is she who had been missing for ages. Later
the psychologist's car breaks down and she runs into the teacher.
After a confrontation they walk to a diner where she tries
to get to the bottom of his problem, but all the person behind
the counter can see is the teacher, an apparent madman, arguing
with himself. Then a creepy man with long fingernails shows
up asking her about the teacher who has fled again, and a
confrontation takes place between him and a cowled figure
whose face is perpetually aflame...
Now,
did you follow all that? No, neither did I, and therein lies
the problem. This film tries to be totally mysterious until
the end, but it just doesn't work. Your immediate confused
reaction is to lose interest and brand it as tosh. Nothing
is explained until very late, and even then it's all crammed
into the last ten or fifteen minutes.
You have to whet the viewer's appetite; give them a snippet
or two of intriguing information, otherwise they'll simply
switch off.
If
I was to say that the psychologist woman was hit by a car
whilst carrying a cat when she was little, and that their
souls were somehow merged, giving her the power to see dead
people (in this context cats have that power naturally), you'll
begin to get the picture. The teacher is dead, but his soul
has not yet been taken. Souls are extremely valuable on the
black market and demon bounty hunters (our friend with the
fingernails and the flaming monk) are trying to steal it.
The psychologist soon learns it is her lot in life to finish
these limbo people off so that their souls can return to their
Maker.
Darkhunters
could have been so much more had it been structured differently.
There are a couple of good moments in it, the best being the
not entirely benign angel that arrives for the teacher's soul,
which is very nicely done. A great play is made about the
released soul joining a bigger light which races out into
space past a multitude of planets, but as we are not shown
its final destination the sequence proves entirely pointless.
A missed opportunity.
Ty
Power
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