Macabre…ish Horror Review: Dark Floors
Dark Floors, 2008/ 1 hr 26 min
After being dissatisfied with treatment, a father, Ben (Noah Huntley), attempts to leave the hospital with his autistic daughter, Sarah (Skye Bennett), and two other patients. But while they’re on the elevator, it breaks down and a patient, Tobias (Ronald Pickup) begins to convulse. This is no normal hospital.
Once they finally leave the elevator they are chased by a ghost. Another patient, Jon (William Hope) is in denial and insists it must be a gas leak or his psychosis, even though everyone experienced the same event. He leaves the group and returns to an elevator and as the door closes something is clawing it’s way through the floor.
Meanwhile, Tobias is suicidal and Sarah is furiously coloring while, a staff member, Emily (Dominique McElligott) tries to keep them both calm.
Jon is finally rescued by Rick (Leon Herbert), the security guard and Ben, after being knocked out with a fire extinguisher and bitten by a monster. He’s thankless and rude but he is alive.
On the intercom they hear someone else and t go in search of that person, what they find instead is office staff that seemed to be in an alternate timeline and dead. A tape recorder plays “Give up the girl.” And a monster batters it’s way through walls to get to them.
Rick holds it off and the rest of the group escape into the once bustling and pristine hospital that’s now an aged and dilapidated tomb. On the intercom, Emily is calling…she realizes it is her, calling from earlier. Not only is the universe different, it would seem, time has also stopped.
But Sarah needs her meds and Jon is plotting his survival while Emily and Ben search for the pharmacy. The bodies along the way are in different states of decay, their faces twisted in death. And as they walk, Ben and Emily hear themselves overhead, in the past.
A long dead Tobias confronts Jon trying to give Sarah away in return for his own life and sand blows in a different kind of monster.
Sarah seems to have some incite into what’s happening but she cannot communicate it. After she vanishes, Ben finds an exit that leads into the hospital of the past and the people there, can’t see him. Emily is in the same place but in the other universe and on a different time line. When Ben goes back, he runs into another monster and the still dead and decaying Tobias, who saves him. And re-dies a death that Ben saw earlier where he was skeletonized and skewered to an also dead, creature.
The darkness that’s consuming this reality destroys all light and life. Those still alive may never escape this nightmare.
This Finnish horror is directed by Pete Riski. This movie is full of good CG, great monster design, zombies and ghosts. The concept is really good and though there is a lot of violence and death, there isn’t a lot of blood and gore. Lots of dusty decay replaces the gore you might expect from a film like this. It’s a lot like Vanishing on 7th Street and Pulse with a touch of Silent Hill. Well done!
The hard rock Finnish band Lordi is heavily involved in this film, they play the monsters, the lead designed the film logo and they have a song in the end credits.