Ring of Darkness

Wow, so um. This movie was recommended to us as "boybands that are vampires!" by the girl that was cashiering at Torrid a few weeks ago, and we just now got around to watching it. And wow, is it ever bad. It's also totally homoerotic, to the point where I actually told Lanie it would be hilarious if it turned out to accidentally be porn. It didn't. (Whether that was a good thing or not, I will never know.)

Anyway, it's about this... boyband made up of vampires and they kill their old lead singer right off the bat because he's peacing the fuck out because he realizes that there's crazy shit going on. So they eat him and then they're holding an audition to find a new lead singer. They pick three guys, a mixed-race cutie named Max, a journalist named Jonah, and Our Hero, Shawn. (Actually, when it first started I thought they said "Jon Walker" and I looked at Lanie and said "I am not going to be able to take this seriously at all if that's really his name.")

Anyway, they hold an audition, it's really bad, there's a lot of lip syncing, then they go to the Island of Boyband-itude and continue their auditions. One of the guys is super racist and hates Max the Mixed Guy Who Looks Like Corbin Bleu.

Crazy shit happens. Ryan Starr is in this. It's really dumb and there are a lot of scenes that are inter-cut with TERRIBLE BOYBAND MUSIC VIDEO. And by terrible I mean it looks like Blink-182's joke video that made fun of all the boybands ("All The Small Things," I think).

Blah blah, they want to turn Max into a vampire, Max doesn't want to have group sex, they eat him. Then they set their sights on Shawn, because he's a Real Musician (evidenced by the acoustic guitar he carries around the entire movie and plays, like, once) and they're moving on to be the Vampire Fall Out Boy (or Vampire Nickelback, I'm not sure).

Blah blah, it's really short, thank god, 'cause it's kind of bad in a "now I can say I've seen this" sort of way and never watch it again. It will get funnier with hindsight, I'm sure. I hope. Maybe? - Julieann


Holy shit, what a waste of time.

I think it's no secret that we enjoy some pretty horrible movies here at Lose Your Cred, but this one was a complete waste of what could have been an awesome cheese-fest or parody. I spent the entire hour and 18 minutes praying that Ring of Darkness would get better or, please, just end. Thank God it did one of those, eventually.

The thing that kills me is that this movie had great potential. In the right hands, with even a slightly better cast, it could have been amazing. Don't boy bands lend themselves perfectly to horror? They could have been killer robots, or demons that live off the sound of young girls screaming frantically that occasionally need an actual young girl snack. The band Whoa! (the rival band in the 2gether movie) was scarier than these guys were. The Josie and the Pussycats movie made more sense in "the music industry can be pure evil" genre. Ring of Darkness seemed to want to be among these movies, with their cheesy music video that was interspersed between almost every scene, oftentimes in places that made no sense at all. If they didn't force you to see the whole video in the beginning of the movie, repeat the song three whole entire times during the audition scene or somehow revealed the secretly evil intentions of the band, which, by the way, was named "Take 10." Wouldn't that indicate parody? Why wasn't this movie funny?

If you think that this all sounds awesomely bad, please believe me, it's not. The pacing was awful, chase scenes went on forever but lacked any suspense whatsoever, unless you were interested in when it would actually end. The acting was atrocious and I feel like if I noticed it, it had to be horrible. There were plot holes everywhere and some things just didn't even make sense, period. The tiny plot twist at the very end was surprising but I don't know if it should get pity points because it came out of nowhere, like the writer needed an ending and a motivation and just pulled one out of his ass, complete with some revisionist logic straight out of a soap opera; you know when they try to convince you that someone lived through their decapitation or falling down a well or whatever?

There was one cute moment at the end, surprisingly not ruined by Ryan Starr's mumble acting but it was a false payoff for watching this crock of shit, since you were only given a reason to give a shit about her about 2 minutes prior.

I try to enjoy whatever I'm watching and make my own fun, whatever whatever...that's half the fun of watching shitty movies, you snark all over them, laugh at whatever's stupid at the moment and have a good time. That was almost impossible with Ring of Darkness. Were it not for the super-random homoerotic moments, this movie would have been totally without comedy. I'm not sure why it's necessary for them to drop their pants en masse and perform satanic rituals or whatever, but it made for one of the very few funny moments in the whole movie.

If you feel like you MUST watch this movie, please gather a big group of friends and add alcohol. Hopefully you'll be too distracted to notice that the movie's even happening. - Lanie