The Dark Hours (2005)

Sadly Over-hyped

Best movie ever!

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Blistering performances.

Psychiatrist with a brain tumor spends a weekend with her husband and sister at their cabin. A knock on the door brings a young man who turns out to have a gun. Shortly thereafter, another man arrives, and he turns out to be a former patient of the doctor's, and he wants revenge. While he was in her care, he was given injections of an experimental drug that the doctor was trying on him as a guinea pig because they both have the same type of brain tumor. As the victims are held hostage, psychological games are played; I don't understand why except there has to be a reason to make this movie. Secrets are revealed, of course. I got confused at the end. I must have missed something because it didn't make any sense to me at all. But I give this film 5 stars for the good acting and the dialogue.

If you're a Horror fan such as myself, you must have noticed by now that this profound underrated genre has a few different types of films, other than having a few sub-genres. The Dark Hours, a Canadian production, is much like a combination between Funny Games (where two psychopathic killers take a family hostage and forces then to play sadistic games) and any film (take your pick) where the protagonist can't tell fantasy from reality due to a mental condition.In some films, the effects of fear and unpleasantness are achieved by frightening and startling the spectators, often using cheap cheats like sudden loud music. Not such is the case in The Dark Hours. In this film, the audience is, in a way, tortured along with the characters.Nothing makes a good Horror film great like some unexpected and surprising twists. In this film - what at first bothered me was the fact that the questions asked aren't fully answered. Meaning, the audience can't know for sure what really happened, and what didn't. Eventually, I realized that this feature was exactly what made this film what it is.What's real? What really happened, and what happened only in the protagonist's imagination? Come the film's end - you'll be debating with your friends (or yourself), as the film provides "half-proofs" to support or disprove any theory.Personally, I prefer it when the twists and endings of films do in fact answer all the the questions the original story plants in the spectators' minds, making us go "Ohhhhhh, now I get it!". Still, I really appreciate the M.O this film uses to invoke confusion and despair.I do think tagging this film "sci-fi" is pretty inaccurate, but I guess this is a matter of personal interpretation like almost everything else about it.All in all, The Dark Hours proved to be an original and mind-blowing film, taking the audience for a ride of questions and confusion. For me - that has really done the trick. Very highly recommended for any Horror fan who enjoys it when films successfully mess with their minds!

I just finished watching the film and i gotta say the film is kind of an average thriller,i honestly expected a horrible movie but after 80minutes i modified my initial hypothesis .Well the film's story is quite good and the actors performed okay for the most part,so the film was bearable although i wasn't impressed that much.The actress who portrayed Doctor Goodman is impressive though (& very pretty).The film tells a story about a psychiatrist who has an incurable brain tumor which now starts growing and so she plans to spend a nice weekend with her husband in a quiet remote place but things turn out to be unfavorable for her,is someone messing up her weekend or her tumor is complicating things in a much worse way????...as i said the story is pretty impressive & different but you have to sit till the end to be able to appreciate it...to sum up if you miss this one you ain't missing much!!!

Psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Goodman has an incurable brain tumour which was stable but has now began to grow. She retreats to her cottage for a break where her writer husband David and her younger sister Melody are staying. It all spirals into a hellishly insane movie: gripping, intriguing and paranoid.'The Dark Hours' is NOT a movie that everyone will appreciate. Those wanting a simple movie spoon fed to them should avoid like the plague. This is a trip into insanity with a non-linear narrative and multiple interpretations. It will frustrate those who aren't willing to give it thought and, perhaps, numerous viewings. If you enjoy the weirder David Lynch movies and films that mess with reality/non-reality like 'Jacob's Ladder' then you'll probably appreciate this low budget Canadian horror/thriller.It's a little on the short side and ends fairly abruptly which disappointed me at first, but the more thought I gave the movie the more I liked the it and its ending. You can end up thinking about it and discussing interpretations until you too feel like you're developing a brain tumour. I highly recommend it, just not to everyone.