User reviews

When Detective Mortimer Shade is somehow killed in a freezer, a parasite called a grail possesses his body, revives him, but he needs blood to stay alive. His partner John Dark accepts the new situation and together they become vigilantes, judging and killing the bad guys, with Shade sucking their blood with his claw. However, Dark notes that Shade is losing the rest of his humanity and becoming a monster, being aware and afraid of the danger Shade represents to mankind and trying to stop him.

Is something wrong with my eyes or was it completely intentional to make the cast and crew names at the start almost indecipherable? I could barely read any of the words on the screen. You would have needed to be watching this with a telescope to read the names. Anyways, onto the movie...

The story to the film is quite ho-hum but interesting enough to at least get you to watch it but it every time something is about to actually happen, it lets you down and shows nothing of interest. There are a few scenes which will grab you but it's not enough, there's just too many pointless conversations with all of the stereotypical foreign characters. If you don't like heavy accents, you won't like it either.

The basis on the movie is how Shade was killed and had the parasite re-animate him, which could have been a really cool scene but we never even get to see it. It's all off-screen which is what makes this film suffer as it is shot rather decently. I don't agree with some of the angles and effects used in certain scenes but it's not too bad.

The acting is okay, no great performances and a couple lousy performances (i.e. Chief of Police) but they do alright. The screenplay is a little confusing and jumps all over the place. The movie is very inconsistent with its pace and disappoints immensely. A few notably good gore effects hardly make up for this one and a half hour waste.

To sum it up, whenever you think something interesting is about to happen, it decides to stop and try again later and never pulls through. I'd avoid if I were you.

This movie is a complete dog, cant believe I insisted on staying up in the forlorn hope that it would get better as it progressed. We Brits are simply atrocious at making movies and this piece of crap does nothing more than reinforce this opinion in me. Yes there have been some great features to have left these shores, but as far as this movie fan is concerned, they are very few and way too far apart. I love movies, especially since TV is so dumbed down it's rarely worth turning it on other than for the news or a documentary of any kind which I believe we are exceptionally great at. But I could find no redeeming qualities in this beast of a movie at all. I guess Luke Goss may get some criticism for his acting abilities from some, personally I think the guy did OK. The real problem is the story and the script, complete and utter bollox on both counts. Me thinks they spent most of the budget on the chopper they hired for the aerial shots.

The initial premise of a Gothic cop and horror movie hybrid is a pretty good idea and certainly prompted me to hire out the film!!!! However the film is badly hampered by wooden acting, especially in the case of the Police Chief who reminded me of Kenric and Moss from a Black Adder the Third episode and seemed to be unable to grasp the difference between screen acting and stage acting, the main one being that you don't need to scream your lines at the camera!!!! Carly Turnbull's performance at Albany was very flat and while acceptable in places seemed like she spent the majority of the film reading her lines of an autocue!!!! Having said that the two main leads did put in a pretty good effort with Kevin Howarth, who I think is criminally underrated, proving his worth yet again as a villain by contributing a very convincing and creepy performance showing his characters descent from maverick cop to homicidal monster. Luke Goss did his best and put in a comparatively good performance. Also Matt Lucas cameo is well acted proving he can play straight as well.

Another resounding floor in the film has to be the Americanisation element, with the Police acting like American cops dressing like American cops and doing all but speaking in American accents!!!! The attempt to dress Luke Goss as Vin Diesel is especially frustrating. Also the parasite is a blatant copy of the stomach burster from the Alien quadrilogy!!!! The director Andrew Goth does well all being considered and uses the camera angles and cutting to good effect but with all the gaping plot holes and wooden acting he was unable to turn it around but as they said in Wayne's World "You cant polish a turd".

All in all a good idea that went horribly wrong!!!!!

Oh my dear god, please people, before slating any other film please watch this one first, who in their right mind eats a banana in the bath and then tries to feed some of it to their dog?????? What parasite? what happened in the freezer?? This takes ages to get started and by then interest ebbs away to the point where you just end up staring at the screen blankly. I thought Luke Goss was absolutely brilliant in the TV version of Frankenstein but sadly he seemed to lack any gusto in this bag of dead goats, who-ever wrote this seriously needs to choose a different career path as screenplays are Definitely not their forte. In short this film is an absolute must for either insomniacs or amateur brain-washers.It's dreadful!!

After being brought back from the dead by a parasitic creature, detective Shade is back on the street killing…and eating...bad guys. His partner, John Dark, realizes the situation is out-of-hand and tries to stop Shade before he fully transforms into a monster. This well-made by intensely boring British horror offering features good direction from Andrew Goth, who displays a strong visual style and a good eye for interesting camera angles. The entire cast gave very good performances, especially the golf-playing police chief (name of actor escapes me right now). The make-up effects were quite good, and if you like your horror movies gory…well, let's just say this is a VERY bloody flick and horror fans will not be disappointed in this department. Unfortunately, this is where the list of positive aspects ends. The plot is a big confusing mess, the violence is often mean-spirited, the narrative made no sense and the film is very poorly paced. Not unwatchably bad, but unfortunately dumb and dull. Oh, and did those CG shots of the worm-thing that comes out of Shade's hand look like crap or what?

3.5/10.

A standard good cop/bad cop film with a bit of a supernatural twist of an alien parasite that sadly doesn't really work that well. Dark and Shade are partners, Shade has tendencies to go over the boundaries of typical law enforcers. One day he survives a mysterious incident in a freezer and an alien parasite enters his body. I rather enjoyed the nihilistic tone, and there are moment that you think it MAY get better, sadly like empty promises that never come through, it doesn't. Hopefully, just like this film was a tad better than his previous "Everybody Loves Sunshine", Goth's next film, the Chow Yun Fat starring "The Wretched" will be a tad better than this. But even if it's not, the title will be apt at least.

My Grade: C-

Eye Candy: Christie Seary is topless, she's dead, but what are ya gonna do mate?; Carly Turnball shows a glimpse of ass, hopefully we'll see more of her in the future. A LOT more

Two violent English cops fight crime until one of them is infected with some supernatural parasite that makes him crave the taste of human flesh. The violence continues, but in a slightly different way.

The first thing that struck me about this film is the use of a blue lens, which seems to be a new fad in horror movies. "Saw III" used a similar tint, and I know I've seen it a few other places, as well. While I like the mood the tint brings out, this technique is becoming too obvious for me and I hope the fad goes away in a year or two because it's just going to get old.

Horror fans who like gore will like this movie, or at least like the gore in this movie, because there's plenty of it. In one scene, a man is waiting at a glory hole to get a little sausage. Moments later, plenty of fluid comes through the hole, but not what he was expecting. Minutes later, another man is shoved through a wall right in front of a hysteric small child, his face mangled to all hell. The violence continues like this for most of the film.

By the way, I also enjoyed the glory hole scene for its use of a Rubik's cube, which I haven't seen used effectively in a movie since the 1985 Chuck Norris flop, "Code of Silence". (Yes, I found a way to reference Chuck Norris in a horror film review.)

I was a bit distracted by the English accents, which are fairly thick and the volume is not loud enough to help you make the words distinct. This is sort of like "Trainspotting", but I found this even less easy to adjust to. I almost would have welcomed some Americans dubbing voices over the top of the film, despite my dislike of dubbing.

The director (Andrew Goth?) knows how to film a scene and get right where he needs to be. Early on during a rooftop scene, he implements some dynamite overhead directing, as if from a helicopter or from Superman's point of view. It was very nice, and much more than you usually get from people you've never heard of. Another reviewer said that Goth, "displays a strong visual style and a good eye for interesting camera angles," which I think is a great way to say it.

The movie sadly suffered from a convoluted plot, where I asked myself "who are these characters?" a few times. Earlier people are already forgotten by the middle of the film, and you aren't really sure what the underlying plot actually is. If the first half is drug dealers who don't show up in the second half, and the second half is about a parasite that never shows up until 43 minutes into the film, where is the consistent story? Also, another reviewer called the movie "well-made but intensely boring" and I would not necessarily disagree. While I was not bored, the lack of connection to the movie made it more difficult to get into what should have been a breathtakingly beautiful work of art.

I also never even figured out who the two main characters were, which I think is a huge drawback. I know the cops are named Dark and Shade, rather than Dark and Cold as you would expect, but I did not know which was which throughout most of the first half. I am pretty sure no background on them was offered and we had no reason to give a fig about either one of them.

I would recommend this film to others, mostly because I would like to hear more opinions on it. I think with some minor tweaking this would have been a great movie, and I hate to dismiss it out of hand on a whim. I would give it a second viewing just to be more sure of my thoughts on the movie. It is not bad, but I'm not sure if I can say it's great. Until further examination, I leave this film with a slightly-above-average grade.

Two bad cops trying to defeat all evil in todays society with a surprise hidden in a arm! This movie never gets interesting even though that the beginning try to hook you up. It's a slow moving story with a very very bad contents - unbelievable that such poor scripts still are made. The change of scenes are bad timed, and the focus in some of the scenes are also unbelievable poor. For example when one of the cops is in the bath and he starts eating a banana! To put it short, very poor movie based on a even more poor script. I simply can not believable that such bad movie still are produced.

If I have to mention a good thing, it could be the rotating camera angels at the beginning, but then again is this not standard in most movies?

I recently saw this movie on DVD. Apparently I'm one of the few who like it. The director of photography did a great job! Kevin Howarth is brilliant as Mortimer Shade. He plays a silent, scary role whom you probably wouldn't like in real life. He does it very well. I also liked Matt Lucas as Dr. Elgin. I didn't like Luke Goss, half the time he sits in his bathtub. Maybe you can't follow when you see this movie one time, but when you see it a few times its very clear. The only thing that should have been better are the actor's names in the beginning, its very hard to read them. Its worth seeing. I think its a good movie but hey who am I :)

There was a lot of stuff I really liked in this movie. Quirky characters, excellent cinematography, moody lighting, great camera work and most of the characters did a good and believable performance.

It's not everyday you see that in a low budget movie. I think they did an excellent job in shooting this in a month.

I have to say that I am a bit disappointed with the ending after I had really enjoyed this movie all the way. But I can recommend this for anyone that concider themselves a horror buff.

Great looking women as well.

I wish more movies had the same enthusiasm in the creative process as this one did.

Good Stuff.

I so wanted this film to be good after watching the trailer - it certainly had some potential seeing that it was British, promised to score high on the gore/violenceometer, starred ex-pop star Luke Goss (not an indication that one should anticipate a film of any quality, but in the trailer at least he appeared promising) and on top of all this featured none other than jolly old bonkers Matt Lucas for good measure.

Apart from one scene in a toilet where our fairly derivative "monster" does the business (and briefly woke me up), this film is the most pretentious, woodenly acted drivel I have witnessed since - well, not that long ago... I still remember "Underworld"...Pant's more like, but I digress...

The script seems to have been written acknowledging that most of the "actors" can't. This becomes most apparent when after around about 70 interminable minutes enter Matt Lucas, with an almost (I said almost!) Shakesperean flair - Oh joy! he speaks the first natural dialogue in the film! Sub Dr Who nonsense. Avoid.

I ended up switching it off after the first ten minutes or so. The story starts with Luke Goss (of Bros fame), pretending to be a double-hard b@stard. Except he sounds and looks like a bum bandit with a penchant for fake tanning products.

The story then managed to drag itself through the next ten whole minutes making me feel really really bad about the impression us Brits have on the rest of the world, if this is the calibre of movie making in our country.

There are many words to describe this movie, but to be honest I wasted ten valuable minutes of my life watching it, so don't think that another ten minutes spent writing about it is wise.

Simply put......don't bother.......

Hip little flick with some ballsy ambition. The director is a guy to watch. The plot was a little twisted, but watch it twice and it gets better. Matt Lucas as Dr. Elgin was a brilliant piece of casting. Kevin Howarth I'd already seen in Last Horror Picture, but in Cold & dark he really gets to flex his acting chops. His performance is mesmerising. Luke Goss plays a good number, very mean and moody. Kinda like Jason Statham. I liked the way Andrew Goth goes for the cinematic shot. This guy shoots for the big screen and it works. But you can feel the tension against the low budget cutting in. There was just not enough time to flesh the good stuff out. Great gore FX in some scenes. The cottage blood bath worked a treat! The team behind this film have got something. I'll track 'em. A Gothic Western next? Cool.

A film that had some potential but a bit too stylistic in delivery. Concerns a policeman, that has died and then possessed by a Vampiric type creature. Gruesome but not in the greatest or delightful way. Stars Luke Goss.