In Search of Darkness

For spooky season 2021, I bit the bullet and subscribed to Shudder to get to a bunch of older horror flicks. And I found this documentary which I’d heard about but hadn’t realized was a Shudder original. So that’s something… four hours of something!

Yeah, this is a hell of a long documentary about horror movies in the 1980s… and it’s only part 1 (there’s a second part that’s almost as long and apparently they are cooking up a part 3). It covers a selection of horror movies from each year of the decade and then peppers in specific topics for the talking heads to jaw about.

The movie does cover some classics and some debatable classics… but I guess that’s one message the film delivers. Not every horror movie is for everyone so when I grumble about 976-EVIL, I gotta realize it’s someone’s favorite. But I did find it odd that they would cover, for example, Stepfather 2 but basically skip over the (superior) Stepfather 1. Or that they cover, I think, every Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Elm Street movie released in the 80s but then basically skip the ones in the 70s (for Halloween) and anything in the 90s. And I’m not convinced Elm Street 4 deserves the coverage (but I guess it’s someone’s favorite).

And the topics they cover between each year… gore, musical score, nudity and sex, etc. rather wear out their welcome if you have any familiarity with the genre or film history. There wasn’t a lot of new insight. Though it was always nice to see some of the actors and directors all these years later talking about the heyday.

And the movie basically concludes with Pet Semetary in 1989 and a weak attempt to build a narrative, “it seems like something was about to change”. Sounds like a weak attempt to suggest the 90s were going to offer more serious, more grisly, or more emotionally charged horror… and not sure that’d hold up in court.

So overall this is a good but very long and imperfect doc. The length would be cool except that it started to grind along and get repetitive. Even if we’re talking about unique movies, the routine started to get old. Maybe this would have worked better as a four part tv series instead of an extra long movie.

That said, I’m still watching part 2… so clearly it didn’t bug me that much.

Score: 83