BENEATH THE DARKNESS (2011)

[indianasmith]

I had not heard any buzz about this film at all, but since I was browsing the shelves looking for new horror titles and saw it out this week, I though I would give it a spin.

This turned out to be a pretty taut, well-done little thriller involving a small town Texas mortician who may or may not be living in a hanted house - or else hiding a twisted secret!

The movie opens with the mortician, Ely (played be Dennis Quaid) jogging up the road behind another guy who is out walking the dog.  Suddenly he pulls a gun and orders the man to  march to his van, which is hidden back down the road.  Next thing you see him ordering the fellow to dig up a grave and open the coffin at the bottom, which is empty.  He forces the man into the coffin, then begins covering it up.

Fast forward two years later.  A group of high school seniors are talking about some of the weird things they have seen, and one of them comments that he thinks the morician's house is haunted.  The three of them head out to it, to see the silhouettes of a man and woman waltzing by the windows of the house, which is freaky, because the mortician has lived alone since his wife died two years earlier.  So they decide to come back, on a night when Ely is not home, and investigate . . .

OK, it looks like this thing is being universally panned by critics, but I will be honest.  I really enjoyed it!  I hadn't seen Dennis Quaid as a villain before, but he really carries off the role quite well.  The struggle of the teenagers to make the local authorities believe that this popular townsman may be hiding a dark secret is probably the most unlikely part of the whole thing, but I don't know that it strained credibility that much.  Overall, this was a fairly mild but fun thriller, with a fairly neat twist at the end.