DARK FLOORS

Sarah (Skye Bennett) is ill. But neither the doctors nor her father Ben (Noah Huntley) know what it is that's wrong with her. After more tests that leave Sarah visibly distressed, Ben expresses reservations about the hospital's ability to care for her - and plans to remove her from their care.

As a storm erupts outside, he takes Sarah from her bed and places her in a wheelchair, preparing to remove her from the hospital. The duty nurse Emily (Dominique McElligott) jumps in the hospital elevator with Ben, trying to persuade him to keep Sarah in the hospital. But Ben cannot be persuaded.

However, the lift breaks down during a brief power-cut. When the lift doors open a few moments later, Ben, Emily, Sarah and three more elevator patrons find themselves still in the hospital. The difference being, the hospital is now eerily deserted.

The six of them begin to investigate their empty surroundings while Emily continues in her attempts to get through to Ben - she believes Sarah is epileptic and may die without proper attention.

The focus soon shifts to all six of them hoping to get out of the hospital alive, when they stumble across the corpse of woman who's had her eyes gouged out. Finding an exit door, they make their way down the stairs leading towards the parking lot - only to be frightened back into the main building by scary noises from below.

So the hospital's deserted and this hapless sextet are trapped inside. They know there's something capable of ripping people's eyes out in there with them, and it seems that the banging noises from the parking lot are drawing ominously closer. Could it get any worse? For Ben, yes it could. Emily informs him that banging noises and flashing lights (the hospital bulbs keep flickering since the power-cut) could provoke a seizure in Sarah at any moment. Cripes. Add to that, the monster they all witness approaching them on the security camera, and Sarah's increasingly weird behaviour - it's almost as if she were psychically linked to the forthcoming creatures ...

DARK FLOORS is a nonsensical exercise in minimal plot and maximum pace, designed to capitalise on the success the band Lordi have enjoyed since their unexpected Eurovision Song Contest win a couple of years back.

Yes indeed, Lordi (the band) are the monsters in question here. With little explanation, they have surfaced from Hell to cause havoc in the hospital. They manage this by manner of transmitting indecipherable demonic voices through mobile phones and TV sets, smashing plates of glass when screeching like ghosts, and - eventually - posing a more physical threat by getting unnecessarily tactile with our heroes.

Pekka Lehtosaari's script is pure hokum, utter unapologetic claptrap. It's hardly surprising, seeing as though it's a simple springboard for a vanity project that was the idea of band frontman Mr Lordi himself. As a result, the linking scenes of conversation amount to little more than macho spiel about escape, and are only there to briefly separate the endless succession of set-pieces.

The set-pieces consist of stylised "spooky" occurrences (weird phone signals; Sarah obsessed with scribbling creepy pictures in red crayon) and old-fashioned monster chases through hospital corridors. It offers nothing original or fresh, but is tautly directed by Pete Riski.

To judge the film for it's acting or characterisation seems redundant. It scores low on both counts, but that's not the point. DARK FLOORS exists to remind us how dangerous Lordi are. Because they are real monsters, you know.

Generic jump-edits and crescending orchestral prompts are a given, but again are handled with relative deftness. Consequently, the film can be seen as always watchable despite rarely making sense and ultimately being, well, stupid.

It's slick, shallow and silly. The monster FX are risible, the script is one that even Jean Claude Van Damme may ask for rewrites on, and the mechanics of the plot are predictable. But there's an energy and a production value to what we're seeing that makes it almost succeed. Almost.

At the end of the day, this plays more like a violent videogame with Lordi as the bestial antiheroes. It's best enjoyed therefore with large amounts of alcohol.

The film is presented uncut in a crisp and bright anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer. Images are sharp and depth is well conveyed in what is a perfectly competent presentation.

English audio is similarly without concerns, offering well-balanced and easily audible playback in 2.0 and 5.1 options.

An animated main menu offers the route to a static scene-selection menu where the film can be accessed via 12 chapters.

Of the disc's bonus features, a 30-minute Behind The Scenes featurette is arguably the most insightful. Offering a 16x9 presentation, this provides plenty of interesting background footage along with cast and crew asides to the screen. This shot-on-video documentary reveals the shoot to be an amiable but tight one. Bennett is enjoyably sweet in her role of introducing us to the protagonists of the story.

"Dark Floors World Premiere" is 22 minutes of well-edited footage from a press conference unveiling the film in February 2008. Some dumb questions are not half as amusing as seeing Lordi sat among the cast and crew members to face the press, in full monster make-up.

More interviews feature over the course of a further 29 minutes. Bennett is too old for her years here, speaking about how her agent rang her about the role and "it all happened rather quickly". I don't mind telling you, she freaked me out. In contrast, Huntley appears awkward and uncomfortable talking about his involvement in the film, while Hope seems to be the happiest of the lot.

Finally, the film's 2-minute trailer is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1.

The disc is defaulted to open with trailers for THE CHASER, MANHUNT and SHUTTLE.

Let's be honest, DARK FLOORS should have been a howler. It should, by rights, have been the horror turkey of the decade. But despite it's lack of logic and the fact that, should you think about the plot for more than two seconds, it's daft beyond belief, it's actually a surprisingly engaging schlockfest.

Worth a watch if you give your scepticism a rest for 82 minutes. And if you're a fan of the film, the disc is a bargain in terms of presentation and supplemental content.

Review by Stu Willis