In the Dark

source: In the Dark

Ali Lear (Elisabeth Röhm) loses her family and eye sight in an accident. She gets assigned Jeff (Sam Page) to help her adjust. Jeff has spent his life with a blind mother. Jeff takes advantage of the situation and becomes a possessive voyeur. This is a well acted film, but didn't make much sense as his relationship with Ali could have escalated to another level making his sneaking around totally unnecessary. Not overly entertaining as it is slow developing and goes practically nowhere. Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity.

Ali has a car accident and loses her sight along with her husband and daughter. She receives the recommendation from her doctor to have a helper so it will be easy to manage around the house. So, Jeff is arrives at her flat and begins to teach Ali how she can estimate the space around her of handle the household items. They also go out at the market or shopping in order to learn how to cross the street. Thereby she meets her new neighbor Linda and begins a friendship relation with her. Jeff is envy when he gets in the house and sees her there because he started an obsession for his patient, he replaced photos with Ali and her family, gets inside without her knowing that he is there, spy her at the shower or begin to move objects from her apartment. Everything changes when Jeff's malice reaches an unexpected threshold and now Ali must fight with the man who allegedly is there to help her. The first half is good but then it becomes too shaky. No doctor sends someone in a home and that person gets a key without knowing his full past or record. Also the fight at the end is ridiculous. How we can believe that a blind woman manage to defeat a man? I guess that is the reasons why it so bad but then you know...these movies...

Only until the end of this dreadful movie do you discover why an apparent mild-mannered care giver become a sadistic killer. Much more of his earlier life should have been shown. It was bad enough that a young artist was blinded in a car accident which killed her husband and young daughter, but then she falls prey to this guy. One would think that romance would blossom between the two. The opposite occurs when he kills her new neighbor. The acting is good here but the writing is absolutely dreadful. All of a sudden, the female doctor who had recommended this guy finds out disturbing things about him. No. The credibility here leaves a lot to be desired. This is certainly not one of these blind adjustment movies.

The 'blind person in peril' sub-genre of film-making is actually quite a packed one. It really took off in the 1950s and '60s in Britain with the likes of Patricia Dainton in WITNESS IN THE DARK, although America made one of the best of the genre with Audrey Hepburn's WAIT UNTIL DARK. It comes as little surprise that the 2013 TV movie IN THE DARK can't hope to hold a candle to these earlier, similar films. The truth is that this is one of the most predictable films I've ever watched. It begins with a poorly-filmed car accident (featuring a cameo from STARSHIP TROOPERS star Patrick Muldoon) and follows up with a newly blind woman struggling to adjust to her surroundings and life. To help her, she's given a carer to assist with her day-to-day life, but all doesn't go according to plan... The problem I have with these television movies is that the protagonists are always so dim and that's no exception here. Elisabeth Rohm plays woman who's dim beyond belief, who can't work out what's staring her in the face. I trust that nobody in real life would really be as stupid as she acts here, and her stupidity is one reason that it's impossible to sympathise with her plight. The supporting cast are little better; the actors include a near unrecognisable Shannon Elizabeth (the American PIE films) and Elizabeth Pena (*BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED) and both are poor, although not as poor as Sam Page playing the carer. And, unforgivably, IN THE DARK is an extremely slow film with very little going on apart from lots of obvious and repetitive scenes. It only gets going at the climax, and then it's abruptly all over. It's pretty much a waste of time.

This movie is a little too hard to believe to be good, it can easily get irritating as you watch it. It starts out with an artist, Ali, getting in a bad accident and her husband and child are both killed. For someone who was just in such a horrible accident she is left in tip-top physical condition, no scars or injuries whatsoever except now she becomes mysteriously blind with no explanation given. Next, instead of hiring a qualified licensed aid to help her get around in her house and adjust to her new lifestyle, her doctor just tells her "here is the guy that will help you" and Jeff becomes her aid. Nobody really knows anything about him, no background checks were done, and once again he has no qualifications other than his mother was blind, and yet Ali has no problem immediately letting this man into her house, giving him a key, and giving him access to all of her money. Ali is also pretty much unaffected by the loss of her family. She cries here and there when they are brought up, but otherwise she seems quite chipper despite her situation. She also has no interest in getting a security system installed in her apartment even though there are concerns about her safety. There are security systems that will beep every time the door is opened so nobody can sneak into the house, key or no key. Luckily for Jeff she never got one, so he can just creep in and out and spy on her. Perhaps her hearing was also affected in the accident, or maybe just her common sense? As things progress Jeff becomes creepier and creepier, he cuts her husband out of her photos, starts taking secret videos of her, and becomes increasingly possessive, but Ali is hardly bothered. Her new neighbor friend Linda however does become a bit suspicious, but once she knows too much and starts to pry into her life too much, Jeff decides to get rid of her. After Jeff offs her in her apartment and leaves the body there for days, Ali decides to go investigate as she usually sees her friend daily but lately she's been missing. Having heightened senses from being blind, you'd think she would smell the decaying corpse as soon as she entered the apartment, probably anyone would, but she doesn't realize her friend is dead until she falls on the puddle of blood, which is curiously still soaking wet. If you can't already tell what the problems with this movie are I'll make it more clear- it's just lame. It isn't engaging enough for a suspense story and it's pretty hard to believe, almost silly at times because of the lack of believability. Jeff's backstory, which isn't revealed until the movie ends, is poorly thought out at best. The way he is defeated is also unlikely. And the acting is certainly nothing special (Jeff is especially cheesy at times). TV movies usually aren't the greatest, but there are much better lifetime movies out there. I'd recommend finding something else.

Good movie!

In the Dark