My review of the stoned campsite thriller Dark Cove is over at Flickering Myth now and below.

Dark Cove is a Canadian indie thriller aiming for scares, intense frights and human tragedy. Hammering home the point that camping is never really a good idea, especially if you don’t know the terrain, the low-budget flick delivers less than it promises – which to be fair, wasn’t a lot to begin with.

Five friends from the city go off to the beach on the ‘wild side’ of Vancouver Island with the express aim of getting high and chilling out. With the beers, weed and magic mushrooms all packed up, off they set for a holiday of adventure. They then proceed to pontificate on a number of instantly forgettable subjects for more than half the movie. The scenery however is beautiful and this is the main thing that provides some kind of respite from the sparsity of ideas on show.

It is really in the scripting, pacing and acting that the flick comes a cropper. I’m all for slow build-ups when necessary, but here it takes over 45 mins for anything to actually happen. Prior to that it’s all unnatural sounding dialogue interspersed with gurning juvenalia and crude attempts at humour. This plus a painful soundtrack of ‘let’s get stoned’ bro-anthems detracts from any possibility of caring too much about what might happen.

Things only start to pick up after the introduction of three hippy, surfer types, two Australians and one Brit (cue bizarre accent) into the area. The Canadians, high on ‘shrooms, join the visitors for a bit of a sing along around the camp fire. That night, things take a grim turn as one of the visitors is a rapist who promptly gets beaten to death. The friends must then attempt to hide the body from the attentions of the other two travellers from overseas. When one of them finds out the film’s best part takes place. ‘Best’ as in hilariously atrocious, that is.