Film Review: DARK COVE (2016)

DARK COVE ** Canada 2016 Dir: Rob Willey 84 mins   

I was excited to see this film after I saw the trailer and when I watched the main feature I realised just how misleading some trailers can be. I didn’t have massively high expectations as it’s about five Twenty-something grad students that go on a three day camping trip to let off steam, drink, smoke weed and do mushrooms….. blah blah blah familiar story. With films like this though you expect some kind of gruesome deaths and people doing horrendous things to survive don’t you?
I sat through 50 minutes of (bad) dick jokes, sexual innuendos, weed smoking montages and a boring philosophical discussion about life and career choices before anything remotely interesting happened. The acting at first was actually okay though. You have the two Jock guys, one of which is played by Rob Willey who also directed it, the loser guy who constantly cracks bad jokes and makes lewd sexual comments and two girls who are actually not too annoying and don’t even get their boobs out (sorry!). Once their camp is set up they meet a perpetually drunk English guy who is with two Aussie surfers, they all get together, have a party and one of the surfers goes back to one of the girls tent with her. Things get a bit out of control and he tries to rape her. The other Jock hears his friend screaming and saves her by dragging the surfer off her and beats him to death. The other three original campers witness this and agree he was a sleaze and deserved it. They then have to bury the body and deny any knowledge or involvement, easier said then done as the dead surfers friends go looking for him and needless to say the truth comes out and one of the Jocks looses it, kills a few more people whilst a bewildered Park Ranger wonders around looking for non existent bears, don’t forget all this happens in the last half an hour!! The English guy is probably the most likeable in my opinion as at times he is quite funny when he’s not singing but the award for best over actor goes to the other Aussie surfer who at one point is so over the top you think he’s about to give himself a hernia. My favourite part of the film is right at the start when they are compiling their list of camping essentials which leads you to think it’s going to be an alright film but it goes downhill from there. The music is a mixture of Hip hop and god awful teen Pop Punk which is not to my taste at all. I think the actors did their best with the script they had, the camera work was well done and the special effects were few and far between given the fact that not a lot happened and there wasn’t much call for them say for a bit of fake blood being splashed about the place I’m afraid. Something to watch on a rainy day when there is nothing else happening!!

Review by Sarah Budd