Murder in the Dark

**

Murder in the Dark (2013) is the very definition of staying until the credits complete to the fade to black. During the production of the film, shot in idyllic, overgrowth ruins of an Italian castle grounds in Croco, the cast were to improv, only provided details when the director and his crew seen fit. It kept the cast on their toes, tasked them to bring their best with characters they would have to define without much help, and kept the fate of them all secret up until the very end. The credits revealed locals (including one guy with a pickaxe!) causing trouble for the production, the actors explaining how this experimental process is equally intense and beneficial to their craft, and the busy nature of the shoot with so much property available to cover. The film itself isn’t too difficult to follow. Medical students and an adult surgeon drive up through Turkey (for whatever reason the script decided to set the film in Turkey although Italy, where it really was shot, would have sufficed) looking for ruins, finding them thanks to a hitchhiker they pick up. The surgeon’s “daughter” takes up with the hitchhiker, causing a bit of a love triangle. While touring the ruins (certainly a candidate for Reddit’s sub, Abandoned Porn), the gang don’t anticipate a killer among them. A night lit by candles scattered, they all decide to play a game called Murder in the Dark, where a specific member of the party has a slip of paper indicating he or she is the killer. He or she will move among the party “killing” until the killer’s identity is either guessed right or wrong. What happens the next day is the classic Ten Little Indians where an actual real killer starts bumping every one off. What is soon noticed is an incision on the side of each body indicating organ removal. Ultimately the results are downright Frankenstein in nature as the killer is orchestrating “transplant research”. With fingers pointing, mob mentality often exploding, disagreements stirring up outbursts, hysterics produced by the situation at hand, and blatant murders (a neck is stabbed and an 18 year old adulteress is poisoned) right out in the open  result thanks to the “mystery killer”. The director, his camera operators, and editor do indulge in trying to incorporate the indie style aesthetic where nothing stays still or lingers, as the action moves about constantly with the characters, most scattered about throughout the area. The ruins are the star, I think. The overgrowth intrudes upon the grounds, despite the hard surfaces of the castle ruins. Unattended and left to the elements, the grounds are an ideal location for some killer to pick off members of a party in attendance. Because this is like one large city, there are nooks and crannies, narrow alleyways, buildings that reach high and low, steps that ascend up and descend down at great distance and height, and corners and hiding places…a killer could have a field day here. And that might be the film’s lure. Imagine a murder mystery shot in Italian ruins with a host of attractive college students involved. You don’t really have to reinvent the wheel. The allure of the location and exploiting what it has to offer is quite unique to the slasher genre. Jean Rollin could no doubt bring vampires and the Castel sisters here. In fact I would LOVE if somebody could shoot a gothic horror film in Croco, Italy. No one shoots gothic horror films anymore, though, so that idea will remain unaccommodated. The characters don’t get a whole lot of definition, certainly understandable considering the back story of the film’s production…the cast didn’t have a lot to work with.