The time has come to blog about the final three After Dark films I had yet to see: Seconds Apart, Housekeeping, and 51. I’ll keep this one brief…
SECONDS APART (2011)
This trippy psychological horror flick is like Dead Ringers with telekinesis.
Teen twin brothers have telekinesis and use their powers for evil, making people do awful things that end in death.
Orlando Jones of the Sleepy Hollow TV show is a detective that’s on to them, causing the brothers to switch focus. They begin mind manipulating people who know too much into gruesomely killing themselves.
When everything happening drives a wedge between the brothers, their breakdown allows Orlando to get closer to the truth of what they’ve done, and it’s some pretty sick and twisted shit.
HOUSEKEEPING (2015)
I didn’t love this film, but I can really appreciate its fresh approach to storytelling. When all is said and done, it’s more of a suspense thriller than a horror film, although it always feels very much like something super horror movie-ish is going to happen at any moment.
The story is told entirely through notes and answering machine messages, and features only one character on screen at all times. It’s about a female med student that completely ditches all her crucial requirements for school to take a temp job as a maid to bail her brother out of trouble.
The creepy part is that when she arrives at the house, all her duties are written out in a very brusque tone. And it only gets worse as she returns each day to find harsh criticisms of her work on post its.
And then there are the repeated jobs that demand she clean up blood. Lots of blood.
Desperate for money, she struggles to do her job and not ask questions. She’s also harassed by her school in phone messages and gets messages from her panicked brother, so she really begins to unravel.
Be warned, it’s all very repetitive and slow moving. There are also mysterious flashes of another incident throughout the film, and they are explained in the final act when she (and we) finds out the reason she’s really there.
51 (2011)
When an After Dark title gets rebranded as a SyFy original, you know how things are going to go.
Granted, the aliens and effects here are a step above SyFy CGI. They’re even a little better than the movie they’re supporting. It’s not a bad film, it’s just a pale imitation of so many other alien horror flicks.
A small group of reporters is permitted to explore Area 51 with military chaperone. They’re only supposed to get limited looks at what goes on, but the aliens start running amok and it becomes a battle to the death in a military facility, with aliens traveling through vents, lashing out with surprise tentacle attacks, and even going in disguise as humans so that the humans begin distrusting each other.
What takes it down a notch is a silly “buddy” alien that speaks our language and is chummy with the humans. He’s a slap in the face to the freaky cool bad aliens presented here.
