MovieChat Forums > Dark (2015) Discussion > I'll save you 90 minutes.....(spoilers)

I'll save you 90 minutes.....(spoilers)


This movie is a character study of a young woman who has come to New York to pursue a modelling career, but her insecurities and self-loathing lead to her quitting and becoming a yoga instructor. Maybe something could have been done with this, but it is painfully boring. I noted how nothing of real interest or significance happened in the first 30 minutes, and it really never picks up from there. I am sure there are pretentious, art-house goons who will suggest I didn't like it because there isn't non-stop action or jump-scares. But, that's not it: I like intellectually-stimulating movies that make you think, but ultimately here there is just not much to think about. It's a 30 minute movie stretched out to feature-length, with minimal suspense-builfing in the final act that leads to a pretty lame and unsatisfying pay-off. Anyway, it is really easy to describe scene by scene, so I will do so, so you don't have to watch it. Trust me: I'm doing you a favor. Unless you're one of those hipster movie snobs that automatically likes anything that turns off the mainstream viewer, because you assume that the mainstream viewer likes mindless action drivel, and you, of course, are above that as an enlightened 'true' film lover.

1) Protagonist, Kate, is having sex with her girlfriend and asks her to choke her and pull her hair. The girlfriend is made uncomfortable by this and refuses. The girlfriend wakes up and goes to work.
2) Kate goes to work as a yoga instructor, and after class gets hit on by a guy. She's flattered but turns him down.
3) She goes to meet her girlfriend at her photo studio where she is in the middle of a photo shoot. A black, gay guy says he misses her. We realize she used to work there, and later find out she was a model.
4) Kate and her girlfriend eat lunch outside in the park. Their relationship is complicated and seems to be on the rocks. The girl senses that Kate is drifting away and wants reassurance that they will be able to go back to the way things were. Kate assures her that she will unpack her things at the girl's apartment once she feels settled. Shots of them looking moody and concerned, and then we find out that the girl will be away for the weekend, and Kate will stay at her place by herself in the meantime
5) Kate gets on the subway, she goes to the store and buys some items, she has a glass of juice at the apartment, drops the glass, realizes she has no paper-towels, so she has to go back to the store and buy some. She does, the power goes out at the store, she walks back, walks up the stairs because the elevator doesn't work, and goes back in the apartment.
6) She calls to inquire about a place that's available to sublet, so this reveals she secretly doesn't want to live with the girl anymore (this may have happned earlier, I don't know, a lot of it kind of just runs together.
7) A guy next door knocks on her door and asks her if her power is out too. She says yes, and says that it might be effecting the whole city and not just their building (we are told at the beginning of the film that it is set in New York during the 2003 blackout). The guy invites her to some bar, she politely declines, but he says if she changes her mind, she can meet her at some Mexican-sounding place.
8) Then she walks around for a while, puts batteries in her boom-box and listens to some cd's. She starts drinking and plays dress-up as she takes pictures of herself with a professional-looking camera. She dresses up in a slutty, sexy number and goes out to a bar (a different one than the guy next door was going to).
9) She gets to the bar and one of the bouncers (Redman) recognizes her. they talk and catch up a bit and he tells her to go in and have a good time.
10) She meets this dude, named Benoit from Montreal. He's a good-looking and nice enough bloke and they hit it off, and she intimates that he should come home with her and bang her. He realizes what she wants, and decides to call it a night because he doesn't want to do anything that she might regret because she is so drunk. She gets upset, and feels like this is confirmation that she is not attractive or desirable. He insists that she is perfect and it has nothing to do with that. He wants to walk her home, but she says she can walk herself home, thanks.
11) As she staggers home, she vomits and gets teased by a trio of guys, and she yells at them and asks if they want to touch her and if they think she's beautiful. They just walk away laughing.
12. She eventually gets home, and when she's inside looking damaged and sad, it sounds like someones at the door and her ID slides to her side from underneath the crack in the door. She left it at the bar, and then she hears Benoit on the other side telling her that he brought it back for her. She opens the door, and she wonders why he was following her, and he says it was because he was concerned about her and wanted to walk her home, even if it was 'unofficially'. She pulls him inside, kisses him (with puke-breath I would assume) and then the scene ends.
13. Cut to her talking in a room. We think she is talking to Benoit, but he's already gone I guess, and we were never shown the good part of them getting it on which would have improved the movie ever so slightly.
14. She shares with us that she came to New York to find herself and be somebody, but she could never figure out who she was supposed to be. She wanted to be ugly, she wanted to be nobody (which she said she tried to do). She feels damaged, unhappy and and lost.
15. She goes tot he bathroom, undresses, and puts a pill in her mouth. There's a flashback of the girlfriend discovering her passed out in the bath. She cut her wrists and possibly tried to O.D. on pills (earlier in the bar, Benoit sees her wrists have a scar on them and she, self-consciously covers them up).
16. She takes a bath, submerges herself under water, as we see another flashback from that perspective of her looking up through the water at her girlfriend discovering her passed out. Then we see her in the present moment looking up through the water and she thinks she sees someone. She is startled and gets out of the bath to investigate. Nobody's there. But then someone walks in, she grabs a large, metal flashlight for protection. It's the guy from next door, drunk out of his mind breaking into her house through the window. he thought it was his place, and he apologizes and slowly walks toward the door. He then apologizes again, and says he needs to do something. She thinks he's going to attack her, but he just needs to take a pee. So he does, and then leaves.
17. She starts crying on the floor, I think (yeah, she's a messed-up chick). Then she smashes her CD player with a hammer. Then the door knob starts turning frantically, and she is terrified. This goes on for a while, and she slowly slides herself on the floor to the door. She listens carefully, and then tells them to leave. She thinks it's the guy next door, but we never hear a voice. She walks to the window and exits (it's one of those places that has a metal balcony at every floor that can be accessed by metal stairs).
18. I think she left earlier from the main door before the doorknob incident, and she lost her flashlight and it seems like someone grabbed it and is following her down the inside stairwell. Then she came back inside and then she got startled and left out the window (I don't think it really matters what order this happens in, you get the gist, I think).
19. She walks down the outside metal steps, because she is worried that someone is trying to get into the apartment, and she is using the camera to help her see (she clicks it every 10 seconds or so to get a sense of where she's going).
20. Some creepy guy pops out his window and scares her, but he was just probably wondering what the bitch was doing taking pictures outside his house every 10 seconds in the dark. She starts walking back up and then sees the next door neighbor look at her. He's still drunk but it's not clear if he's back in her apartment or outside of his.
21. She re-enters her apartment, hammer in hand, and walks slowly around, thinking someone may be inside (she locks the door, but is still worried).
22. Someone moves beside her, and she, still on edge, instinctively hits them with the hammer. She walks out the window again onto the metal balcony, and lights up a cigarette. She looks to her left and sees the neighbor drunk on the metal landing outside his room. She then realizes it wasn't him that she hit, it was her girlfriend, who for some reason came back even though she was supposed to be out of the city for the weekend. And, for some reason decided to not say Kate's name or indicate she was inside the apartment at all which would have prevented the tragedy and left no pay-off at all to this fairly uneventful, and pointless affair. We, I guess are to assume the girlfriend's dead, although one blow to the head by a hammer being swung by a woman, might not have been deadly. You think she would try to get help, but I guess she has to be dead for something dramatic to end on.
23. The End

That's almost a play-by play recap, so hopefully you got the sense that you watched the movie and can go read a book or do some chores instead of wasting 90 minutes like I did, waiting very patiently for something interesting to happen and then getting some lame-ass payoff after painful long-shot after painful long-shot.




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I just watched it too. Pointless and painfully dull long scenes. I guess the only positive thing I could leave it with is that the lead actress is a good actress.

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Yeah, she was pretty good. Hopefully she'll find a better film. Having the camera on you all the time, especially during times when you are not even talking to yourself must be very daunting, but she pulled it off for the most part. Aggravating flick though. It's basically a short theater-student film extended to full movie length.



- I'M BACK BAY-BEE!!!!

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All of the actors were crap, u could act scared and wierd like that to, takes no talent really.

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Thanks for the summary! I was trying to find it on Wikipedia but didn't even see a listing for this film. I made it pretty far into the movie but kept losing interest, though I was curious how it ended just in case it was a slow burn with a great payoff.

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I think thing you might have missed and which could be appended to your 3) is that when she is at the modeling studio, she overhears two other women whispering, and you hear the phrase "so much weight gain", which Kate of course assumes is about her. Another instance of her insecurity, or self-esteem taking a hit.

22) If she really did hit Leah with the hammer, she very easily could have killed her with one blow like that. Now why Leah wouldn't have said anything from the other side of the door when Kate called out? Who knows? Can't be sure the event really happened, or maybe Kate was only calling out in her mind and in actually just standing there frozen waiting for the door to open.

I still liked the movie and didn't mind watching Whitney Able for 90 minutes. But the producer knew what he was doing with the two hot lesbians getting it on right off the bat. That's how you get guys immediately interested and willing so stick around for the rest of the movie.

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