DARK TOURIST

Jim (Michael Cudlitz) has spent the last fifteen years working as a security guard for an office building. He knows by now that any politeness the workers there throw his way, upon arriving and leaving, is superficial: they have no more time for him than he does for them.

Not that he's complaining. He's comfortable sitting alone in his prefab block on a night, chain-smoking and planning his next vacation. Jim, you see, is a dark tourist - or "grief tourist" as he puts it. That is, someone who gets their kicks from visiting murder sites.

This year, he's decided to go to New Orleans and visit the place where Carl Marznap (based on real-life killer Carl Panzram) slaughtered his parents and burned the local church down. The drive there is lonely - as Jim likes it to be - and he's quite content to stay at a remote motel for the duration of his holiday.

He's a little perturbed, therefore, to discover upon arrival that the room next to his is being used nightly by a prostitute. Oh dear. Jim's laconic facade appears to be slipping somewhat, his narration seething as it reveals how disgusting he finds this "whore" and how tempted he is to punish her.

But the next day delivers promise in the form of downtrodden waitress Betsy (Melanie Griffith). She serves Jim dinner and a tenuous friendship grows as they casually chat. As their bond develops, however, seasoned viewers will be right to suspect that all cannot end well.

Indeed, it's only a matter of time before Jim visits the aforementioned Marznap murder spots and comes face to face with the deceased Carl (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a hallucinatory ghoul insistent on compelling our sulky protagonist to go out and commit dastardly deeds...

Suri Krishnamma directs from Frank John Hughes' script. Both do a fair job, to an extent that makes it tough to pinpoint where this one went wrong.

In terms of performances, they're all credible. Cudlitz is impressively focused, whether masturbating angrily in the shower, screaming expletives in God's direction for placing temptation under his nose, or simply chomping down on a hard-boiled egg in-between ciggie drags. He makes for a highly watchable lead. Griffith looks haggard and this lends gravitas to her grieving waif, convincingly looking for something - anything - to fill that void. Vince wisely undersells his part as the devil on Jim's shoulder.

Krishnamma imbues his movie with rich colours and ambient night-time photography, creating a palpable sense of ill-foreboding as his central character's madness unfolds. The pacing is deliberate; the violence is employed sparsely for increased effect.

Hughes' dialogue is largely cliché-free, helping the characters attain a credibility we don't often see in such small-scale horror flicks.

And yet ... DARK TOURIST doesn't hit the high notes you'd expect these combined factors to reach. Perhaps it's a mumblecore genre film too far. Or maybe it's because the initial twinning of Jim and Betsy doesn't ring true. It could even be that the TV pilot-esque veneer never allows the film to wallow as deeply in the gritty stuff as you feel it wants to.

There's also the chance that, for a film clearly aiming to address the psychology behind someone who repeatedly kills, we don't learn much at all about the human condition. It's a tad disappointing when it's revealed that Jim's obsession stems from regular trips to the cemetery that his dad enforced upon him when he was a kid. And the whole religious allusions, provoking Jim's distaste for any woman with openly sexual urges? Pah, been done better before, in far too many films to mention.

At 77 minutes, DARK TOURIST is also relatively short for a character study. Jim's clearly a troubled soul from the start, but at no point do we identify with him a la the equally questionable characters from films such as BAD LIEUTENANT or I STAND ALONE. Though perhaps the issue could be that Cudlitz, while good, is no Harvey Keitel or Phillipe Nahon...

Whatever the reason, DARK TOURIST engages but only on a slight level. The subject matter is harrowing in concept - and no, I'm not drawing comparisons to the laughable KALIFORNIA because David Duchovny's character visited murder sites for research purposes - but the whole thing feels as dangerous as an episode of 'Sons of Anarchy'.

Monster Pictures bring DARK TOURIST to the UK in its uncut form, presenting the film in a crisp and pleasingly colourful 16x9 transfer on their region 2 DVD. Blacks are free from compression and flesh tones look natural throughout: this is a top notch presentation.

English audio comes in choices of 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. Both do a fair job though the latter clearly has the edge in terms of atmospherics.

A static main menu leads into an animated scene selection menu allowing access to DARK TOURIST via 8 chapters.

The only bonus feature relating to the film is its original trailer. We also get previews for a plethora of other titles which are available from Monster. Three of these - CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY VANILLA, GUN WOMAN and RAVEN'S CABIN - are also defaulted to play at the disc's load-up stage.

DARK TOURIST has lots of good factors but doesn't manage to get under the skin like you feel it should.

Review by Stuart Willis