Dark Watchers: The Women in Black (2012)

Three UFO hunters come face to face with the Men in Black and have their life completely turned upside down.

Director:

Philip Gardiner

Writer:

Philip Gardiner

Stars:

Melanie Denholme, Val Monk, Eirian Cohen

Cast

Cast overview:
Melanie Denholme	...	Alexis
Val Monk	...	Sammy
Eirian Cohen	...	Lorna
Lee Roberts	...	Terry
Rudy Barrow	...	Man in Black
Thomas Gleba	...	Podcaster
James Earnshaw	...	Abductee
Jessica Messenger	...	Girl
Nikki Webster	...	Alien Being

Storyline

More and more UFO sightings occur every day. Across the globe people are losing time, friends and loved ones disappear, while the Men in Black are perpetually lurking in the background. In a sleepy seaside village, three women search the skies for a sighting of a UFO that is repeatedly haunting the area. Every day they venture out until one day they return having completely lost 4 hours from their lives. Their need to understand the UFO's and why they are here opens a world they could never have imagined and takes them into the heart of a dark and secretive universe populated by the Men in Black. Coming face to face with the unknown, they begin to realize that they have been profoundly affected by their encounter. To make matters worse, they begin to evolve into something amazing, yet horrifying - something beyond their worst nightmares. Beware the Dark Watchers.

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Taglines:

They're Coming For You

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Genres:

Sci-Fi

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 April 2012 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Nottinghamshire, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

£10,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Reality Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD

User Reviews

Bland school project

Philip Gardiner is a documentary film maker specializing in the weird and mystical, so he probably figured that expertise had prepared him to pull off a scripted documentary-style thriller ala Paranormal Activity. That seems to have been a premature assumption.

The shots that make up this film are filtered and tweaked to look like documentary-style shots, but the multitude of available angles and some apparently hand-held cameras with no explanation of who's doing the filming would seem to ruin that illusion.

We see the intimate lives of three female roommates who experience alien-related things. Sometimes that involves gratuitous underwear shots (cool if you're into average cockney girls), and weird visitations from the excessively-robotic "men in black" accompanied by fog that appears for no apparent reason other than an unsuccessful attempt at ambiance. PS. That fog machine was probably the most expensive effect in this production.

If some performances were good (quite possible, at least for the lead girls), it was hard to tell through the poor production, and due to the fact that everyone probably had to improvise their way through accommodating the film maker's vision of stretching this into a feature-length movie at all costs. But even the mere 1-hour 15-minute run time was way too much. This should've been a short, though I'm not certain that would've saved it.

Contrary to some claims, there actually is a story here, with an original concept no less. If you can bring yourself to sit through this school project, or at least skip around to grab the scenes that advance the plot, you might even go, "Hey, at least the guy had an idea after all."