The Temperature of Darkness

Director: Brett Davis

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

This is a film that, as I write, is available to watch on YouTube so this is less a review and more of an awareness raising article. It is based on Dracula and, in doing so, it carries an interesting conceit – which does take some suspension of belief, to be fair. It is also, ostensibly, a found footage style film – this doesn’t hold to scrutiny as there as some deliberate shots out with the in-film cameras, nevertheless it is mostly in that style. It is clearly a budget film and several of the players have only this in their IMDb credits, so that needs taking into account.

It starts with a man, Singh (Rajesh Rajan), talking to camera about the footage we’re about to see and the fact that he has taken efforts to make sure his family are safe. He mentions that they did discover a new way to kill a vampire.

Jonathan and Mona

Someone holding a camera asks a young woman what she is doing, she says looking at the horizon. She is Mona Morelli (Kathleen Mason) and he is Jonathan Harper (Tom Shuggars). She is in a bit of a grump and not really wanting to see the video of Jonathan’s recent business trip nor hang with his friends Quince (Dan Thorp) and Lucy (Sharanya Ravi) – the names, as you can tell are rather similar to those in Stoker. He shows them the trip, which was a flight for his realtor company to England – through London (we get some footage) and then to a village.

mates together

In the village he meets Captain Dragar (Lawrance Binda) bringing the deeds and paperwortk for the beach house they are in. He films as he goes in but the camera is aimed at Dragar’s fingers, not at his upper torso/face. He asks to take a picture – noting here that the camera switches to him holding his camera, breaking the found footage conceit – and later, when he gets the film developed Dragar is not in one picture and fuzzy in another. Dragar, apparently, was so taken with the property that he has allowed Jonathan use of it before he arrives in America and insisted that he brings his friends – especially Mona, who was seen on Jonathan’s phone.

Lawrance Binda as Captain Dragar

It’s interesting that we still have an East to West journey, but rather than to England, this is from England and to the USA. We get a little time dedicated to the friends. Mona, it should be noted, has told her father (Mike McMullin) she is on a girl’s trip and he has insisted that she brings bodyguards, Jack (Brian Polensky) and Gino (Brian Polensky), who wait outside and are cool with the deceit with regarding her companions as she is nice to them. Her father is essentially a mafia boss and also makes her wear a GPS tracker. We also get a moment with a fortune-teller (Rachel Shigley) who essentially tells them all that they have no future. Eventually Dragar arrives, puts supplies in the basement but lets the guys stay on. Lucy sleepwalks and becomes withdrawn, avoiding the sun etc. There is a point made of them inviting him up to where they are staying (and confirmation that an invitation was needed later). This doesn’t sit right as he owns the property.

Rajesh Rajan as Van Singh

Mona is approached by Singh at a gas station and blows him off at first but eventually calls him as odd things are happening. He explains that Bram Stoker was a journalist and his family have killed Dracula, under different names, multiple times – his actual name is Van Singh. Dracula/Dragar is a creature of habit and looks for patterns – hence choosing a group of friends with names close to those in the novel. Noteworthy here is Lucy’s surname is West and Quince is from Texas also. That was the conceit where my suspension of disbelief struggled, though I did like the idea that the vampire repeated his predations in a pattern and I like the fact that he was widely known due to the novel, but the chances of a group of friends fitting the pattern like that seemed far-fetched.

Vampire Lucy and Quince

So lore-wise we have sunlight being an issue (not from the novel, of course), wooden stakes will kill a vampire, garlic will ward him. For some reason Venus Flytraps are associated with vampires (of course a Nosferatu connection) and become perky when a vampire is around, drooping when not. The new method of killing a vampire was found accidentally – as the flash on Jonathan’s camera is automatically daylight balanced it kills vampires. This is extended to flash/torches on smart phones (though they seem to use the screen). The flash makes them fizzle out in bad cgi (daylight burns). Dragar can control minds, to make you forget he was there and make you not see him (defeated by looking through a smart phone’s video).

There you have it, a Dracula based vampire film whose imdb page is here.