'Super Dark Times' Review: This Little Indie Flick Puts Most Hollywood Movies To Shame!


⭐ Super Dark Times ⭐ Review ⭐ 9/10 ⭐

In Super Dark Times (2017), a teen must come to grips with his increasingly psychotic friend in this harrowing and tense coming-of-age thriller. Written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, and directed by Kevin Phillips, this indie film's competency highlights why Hollywood fail on many levels. Younger, more creative filmmakers are using technology and innovation to craft solid, beautifully-rendered films that quite simply, put big-budget studios to shame.

This is Director Kevin Phillips' first attempt at a full feature film, and I have to say, bravo! Nearly every scene in this film is beautiful, but it's not another example of "style over substance." The movie is structurally sound, competently written, and the dialogue is believable which in-turn makes the characters feel that much more real. It reminds me of films from the '80s and early '90s, which tried to ground fantastic or extreme situations in reality (Stand By Me).

As Super Dark Times opens, a buck has accidentally crashed into a high school and severely injured itself. Two police officers clear the scene and put it down. This dramatic, bleak and brutal scene sets the mood for the rest of the film, a mood that's sustained wonderfully well throughout.

Enter four acquaintances, childhood friends Zach (Owen Campbell) and Josh (Charlie Tahan), Daryl (Max Talisman), and an 8th-grader named Charlie (Sawyer Barth).

The kids discover a bag of marijuana and a samurai sword in Josh's brother's bedroom and take it to a park to mess around. Josh and Daryl get into an altercation and Daryl falls on top of Josh who is at the time holding the blade, yep you can already see what happens next. Boom! Sword straight in the neck. The teens frantically hide Daryl's body in the woods (The acting from the youngsters in this scene is out of this world) and try to forget about the crime, but from there on in Josh's increasingly erratic behavior stokes Zach's guilt, paranoia and fear which is ultimately what the story is about; how guilt and fear can affect us all differently.

Like Stand By Me (1986), Super Dark Times subverts the genre and takes it to a much darker place. It is by no means a perfect movie, but it's not trying to be. Its simple authenticity comes across more like a documentary than a feature film, and its style takes you back to the early '90s without overtly playing on nostalgia.

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