Super Dark Times

Remember the 90ies? Well, good that someone does because the makers of Super Dark Times don't seem to have a fucking clue. Lazy ass period detail wouldn't be so bad except as you're watching this, it becomes clear that the 90ies setting is the hook... and indeed the only thing this movie (supposedly) has going for it. The plot is just dull nothingness and the lines are... well, it shouldn't take me 30 minutes to figure out whether or not the protagonists are supposed to be actual retards.

Super Dark Times? What's this movie about, the freakin 2016 election?!

There was a lot to like about this movie. It has some high anxiety and several good suspenseful moments. Music was pretty good, and there was many interesting moments. Mostly good performances. However, the plot is muddled by confusion and poor presentation. I particularly disliked how they wrapped it up with an incoherent non-ending. Signs of bad directing throughout. The ending was likely ruined by over ambitious editing.

Now that nostalgia has become a self-serving masturbation tool for the banal, SDT uses its setting as an unbelievably effective surrounding for a refreshing look at the US. In the 90ies everything starts, but nothing stays the same: toxic masculinity, violence, guilt, class divide. Harvested on the base of boredom, inequality, and political failure. Presented in between an opening and ending so surprising and wise, it would've been enough for a great movie alone.

In the era of nostalgia, it is easy to get won over by cheap tricks. Enter Super Dark Times, an example of nailing an era without showboating. Layered on top of this is an almost fairytale-like setting where the central characters seem to be the only ones around. What a vision for a first-time director. Style over substance? Occasionally, but that score. And that finale. Wow.

This is what I thought George Washington was going to be.

The performances were engaging as-well as age appropriate, the teenagers felt like actual teenagers you could run into at the park. There were some really great shots to inspire a underlying sense of angst and unease. This was a really enjoyable watch as the film progresses the tension builds leading to a really tense finale.

It's a far-fetched story, but the film is able to adequately capture the anxiety and deteriorating mental health of the teenagers caused by the incident. The acting was good, but couldn't save the flawed script. The ending felt infuriatingly inconclusive.

The locations are beautiful, and the whole film looks great. It gets a lot of things right, but the story seems a bit fabricated at times.

It doesn't really go out of its way to do anything new from a narrative perspective, but it's all executed good enough that it's much better than mediocre. I chalk this up to the way it's shot; the town looks menacing and not quite right, whether it's the shit that goes on around the main characters (which is never returned to), or the emphasis the director/cinematographer put on the environment. Trees seem evil here (which they are, fuck trees and their ulterior motives).

The shit kids get up to. Dark and haunting.

Solid Know What you Did Last Summer/Mean Creek type of film. Great direction, the actors do a good job, and Charlie Tahan is a great casting choice. The film is only mildly let down by the many dream sequences and straight forward predictableness of the last 30 minutes.

Wait wait wait, what was that last scene already?

Have been reading Columbine by Dave Cullen and the way these kids interact was giving me the vibes Cullen uses to describe the shooters and their friend groups interactions. Not intentional I'm sure just where my head was at

Another grimdark thriller that besets teenage boys...oh yay! Super Dark Times is a mixed bag. It explores the deterioration of a boy's humanity and the depravity into which he descends. This is set against a protagonist who remains grounded and reasonable. The film is atmospheric and well-made, unfortunately I didn't like it. The 90's throwback seemed unnecessary, the actors were forgettable, and the movie seemed to unintentionally comment on social differences more so than exploring darkness.

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Unrealistic bullshit. Poorly written characters and a stupid plot. The 80's nostalgia that came with IT and Stranger Things should not be used as a jumping point to dive into 1990's nostalgic bullshit. It didn't feel like the 90s. It felt like the new generation drew on a whiteboard what they thought the 90s were like and everyone was like, let's do it! Poor execution.

A great lookin pointless movie

Starts off promisingly enough in the River's Edge/Mean Creek vein, but dissolves into standard psycho kid melodrama. Atmospheric photography and strong performances help.

A dark tale of two friends becoming strangers after a horrible accident creates a rift between them. I liked that a lot of the characters reminded me of my own school life. The acting is well done and the movie has a nice weird aesthetic.

Too derivative. How many times has this same story been told? The title is also obnoxious.

Teen paranoia where a kid turns into a psychopath after accidentally (or not) killing a colleague. Well shot for all the wrong reasons -- teen angst depicted as a series of dumb decisions -- and evidently a film that takes itself a bit too seriously.

Its eventual devolution into a potboiler slasher/thriller is a disappointment, given the strength of its portrayal of the confused, bizarre, and often aggressive behaviors of boys-becoming-men, set in an anonymous (and perpetually dusky) lower-middle-class suburbia which rings so true to my own adolescence. Ah well.

Starts well enough, but then it becomes bad because the characters stop making sense, they are not believable and the whole movie changes genres, so I lost interest.

The movie title is equally about the story and the brightness in this film.

Not bad.

review: https://letterboxd.com/kurasake/film/super-dark-times/

Super Strange Things is a movie about how deer jumping through school windows can ultimately ruin friendships. One might think this was obvious, and that a full, feature-length movie was not required to state such an obvious fact, but here we are. There is also a bag of my brother's marijuana, a girl who chose my best friend over me, and a samurai sword, so I suppose you could say it is an accurate representation of the life and times of 50% of the boys growing up in the 90s.

RIVER'S EDGE + katana = KATANA'S EDGE.

Tahan has the screen presence of a cucumber, and the weird shifts in tone don't exactly help him to find the spot for his character. Campbell tries to give a rendition of teenage angst while the love interest basically dry humps him. The "cool" single-mom seems dated. Get it? It's all pretty underwhelming, so i'm puzzled why it doesn't ring with the memories of my own teeniehood.

worth a watch

I actually enjoyed the first half of the film. It was entertaining, suspenseful and rather well-crafted. But then it took a turn. A dark turn, of the bad variety. It seemed like the author didn't know how to end the story or forgot what they were trying to convey in the first place so they simply settled on a chaotic, non-sequitur, free-for-all that didn't make an ounce of sense, presumably figuring it was a more profound way to finish. Nope! Sometimes that works, but it definitely didn't here.

Terribly cheesy and childish, characters seem really stunted. Last time I check imdb ratings!