Detective John dark has to uncover who, or what, is killing off all of London's most wanted villians after a number of savage murders are discovered.
Cold and Dark
As any fan of low budget Sci-fi and horror knows; there is always an element of forgiveness while watching the film. The budget doesn’t always stretch to what the writers, producers and directors would ultimately like to see across the screen in their final magnum opus.
Cold and Dark is one of those films, you can forgive them the fact that most of the exterior locations are situated around shipyard docks, and presumably the interiors shot at the same location, because this film looks good, great care and attention has gone into making sure that they money that they had went up onto the screen.
Luke Goss (
Blade 2, Bros) looks very ‘Hollywood’ and appears to have been practising the hero’s squint by presumably watching
Clint Eastwood films over and over again. Goss is DI John Dark, freshly teamed up with maverick officer DCI Shade, they both work out of a police special unit, and as with most low budget movie special police units; they both reinforce this fact by having shoulder holsters and cigars. Goss first meets his new boss at the top of a crane at the docks. Why? Because it gives the director a chance to show off a pretty spectacular helicopter shot.
It is a shame that more time was not spent building up the villain character of DCI Shade, before he gets infected; which is ultimately what the film is about; a parasite. Shade is killed in the line of duty, but comes back to life when his dead body is infected by the aforementioned parasite. Shade then goes on a killing spree as the parasite begins to over take his body. Before the change Shade was a ‘lone wolf’ police officer with a taste for fine Italian fashion and beating people in the face, after the change he now has a clawed hand that tears flesh and drinks blood but still retains the taste for Italian fashion, so nothing really changes; he was a nasty guy before and now he is a nasty guy that you wouldn’t want to shake hands with.
Goss takes it in his stride, that his boss has a snake-like clawed hand and is in fact clinically dead; he even goes as far as commenting “It looks good on you.” It’s only when an innocent is killed does he decide that as effective as his boss was at getting rid of the bad guys, it probably wasn’t the best way to go about policing, and it was about time that he probably pulled that gun of his and did something about it
The film is peppered with eccentric quirky characters, from the Italian designer to the Police Chief (The guy from the square crisps advert) but it is one hour and three minutes into the film with a few scenes left to get through that Matt Lucas (
Little Britain) decides that he is going to steal a few. Playing the head of a paranormal department and dressed like he’s off on a highland walk in the 1930’s, he sets about livening up the final act of the film. Of course he knows exactly what’s going on and all the special terms for it, and delivers some genuinely witty dialogue while Goss practices his ‘squint’ on him
For low budget horror it was nice to see that the director didn’t decided that everyone should put on American accents, but kept the location in England, even if some of the dialogue does sound a little transatlantic. The film makes the most of its locations, actors and production values and has a plot that doesn’t just revolve around the infected police officer. The film may have had a small budget but it’s all there on the screen and you will forgive it its shortcomings.