A Review of In Search of Darkness
Note: This is a review of the Corey Taylor Collector’s Edition.
What’s up, Horror Fam! Back again with another great review for ya, this time of the celluloid variety. In the last five or six years I’ve really gotten into documentaries for some reason. Maybe it’s my older age, or maybe I just like to learn a little something about some of my favorite bands, genres, and movies. As you’re probably aware, there have been a ton of documentaries produced in the last decade exploring why you come and visit this site every day: horror. One can do a random search on Shudder using the key word “documentary” and come across a slew of results. But have any of them tackled what we often refer to as the proverbial gold rush era of horror films? Has any documentary zeroed in on the specific decade responsible for horror’s persistent prevalence today? Well, that’s precisely what CreatorVC’s latest release, In Search of Darkness, aimed to achieve by focusing solely on the iconic, cult horror films of the 1980’s. Did it hit the mark? Read on to find out.
CreatorVC is a new indie entertainment production company that focuses on crowdfunded projects in an effort to keep their content geared toward, and powered by, the fans. At press time, the studio has only produced two films, 2019’s In Search of the Last Action Heroes and the film this review is covering, In Search of Darkness. You can see a trend here, not only in both naming scheme and subject matter, as the former attempted to give an in-depth look at action films, a genre defined in the 1980’s. But fear not, as the parent company for London based Red Sky Vision has been in the film indistry for fifteen years, so experience and quality are not in short supply here in Darkness.
Touting over one hundred hours of interview footage, the film was edited down to two releases, including a 90 minute feature length festival screener which garnered acclaim at Monster Fest, Beyond Fest, and Phenomena Festival. The second release was a whopping 264-minute home video version. I opted to invest in the Corey Taylor Collector’s Edition when I came across the offer in my weekly e-newsletter from The Pit. I didn’t know at the time that there were other versions, like the much cheaper, standard one. As I didn’t watch the other version, I can only glean from the official website that the Corey Taylor edition, aside from a hefty amount of swag, includes a little more Corey Taylor interview footage. Since the Slipknot front man is a self-proclaimed Horror nerd and had a limited edition cut of the film done his name, it only made sense that he garner a producer credit in the film. I’d love to get an opportunity to not only see the 90-minute festival screener, but to also see the standard edition of the home video version, as Corey’s segments do tend to come off a little overzealous and dare I say… fanboy-ish. But hey, I get it! The dude’s just a true fan.
The film itself is nothing if not a great source for data mining future weekend night binge sessions, since the content jumps back and forth between informational segments on the various tropes, mythologies, histories, and psychology of horror cinema and highlights of lists for every year in the decade. Being the type of guy who likes to be educated as much as entertained when watching a documentary, I admit I looked forward to the informational segments over the yearly release highlights. But we did get a kick out of jotting down films we’d never heard of. We eventually made a game of noting the films we did know, guessing if they would be highlighted in the following year’s highlight segments and celebrating with a fist pump when we got one right. Again, without having access to the 90-minute festival screener, I’m only guessing that the individual year release highlights were probably omitted, leaving just the informational segments.
I always find the exploration into the psychology as to why we watch these films to be most interesting. It’s a subject that comes up in other recent releases such as in AMC’s docuseries, Eli Roth’s History of Horror and the brilliantly produced BBC series, A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss. I can’t speak to anyone else’s reasoning, but I tend to agree with the idea of escapism (the reason why I watch anything) and not so much with the whole ‘fear of death’ thing. Although, there is something to be said about never wanting to see a head explode in real life, yet getting giddy like a child when you see it on television. Some of my favorite segments in this release had to be the chapters entitled, What You Can’t See Will Scare You, which delves into the importance of sound design, music, and other audio in horror films, a fact I can’t instill in my students enough. And of course the obvious, SFX Magic Tricks. If you’re an audiophile or sound engineer like myself, you’ll appreciate the former, but the gore hound in me enjoyed the latter as well. Other great chapters include explorations into the media most closely associated with 80’s horror (the VHS tape), horror heroes and villains and of course, the holiday horror movie. That list just scratches the surface. Remember, fans, this piece of cinema is over four hours long.
Interviewees taking part in Darkness are a veritable ‘who’s who’ of not just 80’s era horror, but horror in general. Ranging from actors to directors, and even to modern day podcasters, all are pretty well represented here. And the fact that newcomer CreatorVC was able to gather all these icons together with nothing but one other release to their name speaks to the rabid fans that they themselves are. I mean, from the actor’s front, we’re talking Tom Atkins (The Fog, Night of the Creeps), Keith David (The Thing, They Live), and Kelli Maroney (Chopping Mall, Night of the Comet) just to name a few. Creators included the likes of Lloyd Kaufmann, the incomparable John Carpenter and Larry Cohen, who gets a special tribute before the credits roll as he passed away before the film was completed. Other notable cameos include Greg Nicotero, podcaster and Blumhouse exec., Ryan Turek, and The Last Drive-In co-hosts, Joe Bob Briggs and Diana Prince (aka Darcy the Mail Girl). Conspicuously absent are some no brainers like Robert Englund, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Savini. But who knows the reasons for their absence. Schedules, deadlines, and budget always need to be factored into an undertaking of this size and sometimes the stars (no pun intended) just aren’t properly aligned.
So let’s talk about that soundtrack, shall we? As kind of a supplemental entry to my ongoing series here on the site, Sounds of Horror (yes, I know there’s been only one entry so far, but there’s more coming, I swear), I want to take a moment to highlight this very special group of collaborators. More of a companion to In Search of Darkness than an official score (although if you’re curious, the score was provided by Ireland based music production company Weary Pines), the official soundtrack was released by New York based NewRetroWave records . Self described as a networked label dedicated to promoting artists rather than making a buck off them, NRW records spend the bulk of their time marketing for the artists, thus leaving all the profit to the artists themselves. I’ve personally been following their exploits for a few years now after hearing a song by one of their artists, ALEX, on Pandora radio. That same artist appears on this soundtrack as well as other fan favorites such as Power Glove and Tokyo Rose. Morgan Willis provides the only song that does appear in the actual film, a creepy synthwave track Raven. The soundtrack is available on the NRW records official bandcamp page. For more on the NewRetroWave records story, I recommend seeking out another great documentary currently doing the festival circuit, The Rise of the Synths, also featuring John Carpenter, taking care of narrating duties.
To wrap up, if you can get your hands on a physical copy of In Search of Darkness, or find it streaming online (currently streaming on Shudder), I highly recommend you watch it. It has a ton of great film recommendations for even the most die hard of horror fans peppered throughout the production. Even if you’ve seen every film mentioned here, you’ll still get a kick out of the rest of the content. The only gripe I have about the film is a minimal one: oh my goodness, that runtime! I would like to challenge anyone to watch this in one sitting, as I found it more manageable to finish in at least two. Finally, the music delivered in both a score by Weary Pines and an official soundtrack by NewRetroWave records are top notch and a must own if you’re a fan of 80’s horror film scores and/or synthwave. For more on CreatorVC Studios, you can always check out their website here . I’m currently awaiting, with much anticipation, their next crowdfunded effort, In Search of Tomorrow, their definitive 80’s Sci-Fi documentary and yes, I did pitch in for that one ;)
In Search of Darkness the film: 4 out of 5 corpse fingers.
In Search of Darkness the soundtrack: 5 out of 5 corpse fingers!
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