Audience Member
this is the dark souls of modern cinema
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
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Audience Member
Dark, creepy, and enjoyable. The opening scene will draw you in immediately.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
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Audience Member
Quite enjoyable story about a father hunting down the people who hurt his daughter. The police say a serial killer is drilling holes in women's heads, but the women come back to life...changed.
Dark Souls is lots of fun. Decent acting, and lots of unanswered questions, leaving this movie up for interpretation.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
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Audience Member
<B><I>Mørke sjele</I>r aka <I>DARK SOULS</I> (Norway, 2010)</B>
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: César Ducasse, Mathieu Peteul
FEATURING: Morten Rudå, Kyrre Haugen Sydness, Ida Elise Broch. Johanna Gustavsson
GENRE: <B>HORROR, SCI-FI</B>
TAGS: thriller, mystery
RATING: <B>5 PINTS OF BLOOD</B>
PLOT:<B> A father tracks down an enigmatic mass murderer who infuses a pathogen into his victims' brains. It causes them to slowly rot as their bodies produce a profusion of an oily black vomitus.</B>
COMMENTS: A toolbox killer is running loose in Oslo with a nasty drilling habit. After screwing a hole in his victims' skulls, he injects something strange into their brains which kills them. But not for long. They come back to life, their gradually rotting bodies producing a mysterious new hydrocarbon, like crude oil, a foul, caustic, bilious substance which they vomit up in great abundance.
When his daughter (Broch) is found dead with a drill hole in her cranium, Morten (Ravn) receives a call from the police requesting him to identify her body. But he can't, he answers, there must be some mistake. She's perfectly alright, right here at home, just came in the door.
But Morten's daughter Maria is anything but alright. Her face is rotting and she's barfing oil. When perplexed doctors ask to experiment on her, Morten decides to take Maria back home, covering all his furnishings with protective plastic to guard against her, um, frequent spills. Brain damaged, deranged, Maria stumbles about the apartment and stares blankly at the dinner table, repeatedly banging her spoonful of mashed potatoes into her cheek and forehead instead of into her mouth.
Meanwhile, the victim count rises as the mad driller strikes again and again throughout Oslo. Following a chance encounter in which the culprit attacks Morten, Morten, with Maria in tow, begins tracking the maniac. Morten discovers a ghastly connection to a sinister North Sea, deep drilling oil disaster, as he unearths a bizarre, nightmarish, dark plot.
Dark Souls is a Norwegian effort, and North Seas oil production is a major nationalized industry in Norway. Eighty percent of Norwegian petroleum production is owned by the government, which retains 85% of net petroleum revenues. The Norwegian government effectively distributes the benefits of its oil wealth, regionally and throughout its population. Due also in part to a generous social welfare system, an equitable labor relations system and a progressive tax system, Norway can boast one of the lowest levels of income inequality in the world.
The benefit comes at a cost; Like any country, Norway has had its share of shameful petroleum mishaps, from the June 2000 Project Deep Spill, the first ever international deep sea oil spill, to the more recent 2007 Statfjord oil spill, and the 2009 Full City oil spill. Norway has strong government oversight of oil exploration and extraction. Citizens expect accountability from their governing bodies. Controversial courses of action by Norway's Ministries of Industry and Petroleum and Energy have been the subject of major environmental protests and lawsuits. An example stems from the Norwegian government's go-ahead for continued Arctic drilling despite appalling, hazardous 2007 and 2008 StatoilHydro leaks in the Barents Sea.
It's little wonder then that Norway's Dark Souls' finds its inspiration in the viscous black well of its own petroleum industry. The film's prominent themes are familiar ones. The concept of environmental bad karma and mysterious substances which once ingested, wreak recombinant DNA havoc strongly smack of movies we've seen before. To wit: H.G. Wells' The Food of the Gods (1976), The Children (1980 and 2008 -previously reviewed here), and The Stuff (1985). In each of these films, malignant industries go too far in the name of greed. Fallout ensues in the form of a grotesque backlash where monsters dole out horrid retribution upon the society which passively stood by while corporate outrages were committed against nature.
Some subtle tongue-in-cheek posturing lets us know that Dark Souls doesn't take itself too seriously, yet it is never campy or silly. The film manages to combine some chills with delightfully disgusting revulsion. Featuring an abundance of Steadicam shots, Dark Souls imposes a close-in, almost documentary-style, gritty feeling, without straying into the realm of cheap "found footage" style movies. While more mysterious and eerie than horrifying and scary, Dark Souls is a first rate production with a few memorable scenes, and a refreshing lack of a Hollywood-requisite "happy ending."
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
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Audience Member
Dark, creepy, quirky, and nearly inscrutable. An interesting zombie film in which the zombieness is never truly explained, but which seems to involve X-Files-esque black oil. It's a little slow, but it's definitely worth watching if you run across it.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
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Audience Member
I really expected this to be better but was left disappointed
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/02/23
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