The Black Dahlia Haunting (2012) Directed by Brandon Slagle

Don't you just hate it when a movie is deliberately being confusing and messy to watch, in an attempt to let it come across as something clever and complicated?

This is not a great movie, not even by low budget movie standards. The problem really isn't its budget but simply the writing and directing instead. It's never a tense or interesting enough movie because it isn't ever handling its mystery very well.

Make no mistake about it; this movie may be titled "The Black Dahlia Haunting" but that doesn't mean this is a horror movie as well. It's more of a mystery movie than anything else really and that of course is perfectly fine. Just know what to expect!

I don't know. Perhaps this movie was trying to be a more philosophical and artistic type of movie with its themes and images but simple fact remains that nothing within this movie ever works out very well. It's never interesting enough, never tense enough, never mysterious enough. Just overall never good, with anything.

Still, as weird as it may sound, I also have to give the movie lots of credit. If this movie truly got done for just $2,000, than it's still a great accomplishment as movie. Sure, the sound quality is quite lacking at times but that's just about the only thing about this movie that would ever indicate to you that you are watching a movie with an extremely low budget to it. In that regard it perhaps also isn't entirely fair to judge Brandon Slagle's writing and directing abilities, based on just this movie. Who knows, maybe he's perfectly capable of delivering a decent genre movie, when given the right budget and other means, since it's not like this movie is without any quality or good ideas in it.

And now that I'm on a positive role; the acting also really isn't that bad. It of course helps that all of them involved are industry professionals, so it's not like any of them is standing in front of the camera for the first time, as more often would be the case for these low budget type of genre movies.

Some good ideas but overall still too lacking as a movie.

4/10

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