A pretty good horror movie from Finland (but shot in English and apparently set in the U.S.), "Dark Floors" follows the "5 Characters in Search of an Exit" formula first popularized by the "Twilight Zone" episode of the same name, later the "Cube" films and even "Saw 2."
The film opens with a father confronting doctors in a hospital over their treatment of his autistic, wheelchair-bound daughter. He opts to leave the place with her, but during a trip down the elevator with some other folks -- including a doctor, a security guard, a homeless man and another hospital visitor -- something happens. The doors open to an alternative universe version of the hospital that's abandoned and looking severely run down.
As the group attempts to figure out what the hell just happened, things start to get scary when they come across a woman in a wheelchair who's eyes have been gouged out -- and start seeing ghosts everywhere.
Things get seriously dramatic when the jerk of the bunch (played by William Hope of "Hellraiser II") attempts to take the elevator out, only to have the floor ripped opened by a punk rock demon. More demons show up, of course, and the group becomes confused when they begin receiving calls from their past selves on the hospital intercom. Their watches have all stopped and, to make matters even more intriguing, raindrops outside the building have frozen in mid-air.
And it looks like the autistic, somewhat mute daughter has some idea of what is going on.
"Dark Floors" is a pretty solid, Stephen King-like horror movie that has one fatal flaw: The demons in the appear to be dressed like members of the rock band Lordi. Who is Lordi? If you're American you probably don't know. They're apparently pretty big in Europe -- and they produced this movie. If you're a fan of the band, it's probably a real kick to see demons dressed up like them. But if you don't know who they are, it's pretty strange to see demons wearing cheap punk rock attire.
It doesn't completely distract from the story, however, and "Dark Floors" manages to keep up the supsense for a good 90 minutes and close with a powerful, art-film ending. A good movie that only received a DVD release in the U.S. in 2008, grouped with a half dozen or so other European horror films packed together in a "Ghost House Underground" set reminiscent of the "AfterDark Horror Film Fest."
This may be the very best of that bunch. Worth watching for sure.
Are u kiiding meHave u ever seen a movie? i cant believe i spent 5.00 dollars on this direct to video garbage. If a movie is going to have retarded ghosts flying around that resemble shakespeare i would like a little clarification at the end. If u wanna watch two hours of bad acting and goofy effects that are never explained then please rent Dark Floors........ The title is even retarded
Posted by fin? on December 21, 2008
Dark floors was deffinitly the worst movie i have ever seen in my life, without exageration. About 20 minutes into the movie, i realized it was going to be a really corny, really stupid horror movie. The only reason that i watched it until the end was to see how they were going to possibly tie together all of the weired events in the movie, and they never did. It makes no sense, its way to corny to be even a little scary, and the ending sucks. You never figure out why time stops, where they are, why they are there, nothing. All you find out is that the girl is like insane and her and the hobo live everything over again, seriously, what!?
DONT WATCH THIS MOVIE.
Posted by taco on December 21, 2008
to be honest this movie was retarted. If punk rock pigs, sand people and big bursts of sand, flying ghosts that look like shakespear that are named "the scream queen?" scare you, then you should probably rent this movie. But if your not 3, or retarted, then dont waist your time.
Posted by toriandchip on January 31, 2009
OMG!!! This movie really sucks. Please do not waist your time.
Posted by Tenkei on February 5, 2009
It's not THAT bad compared to a lot of the dreck I've watched, and I believe that really IS Lordi in those outfits in the movie, not just actors dolled up like them...
...which then begs the question, why was there only one Lordi song in the whole damn movie?!
Posted by Josh Barycz on February 18, 2009
First off, the person who wrote this review...is and idiot, for lack of a better term. ""Dark Floors" is a pretty solid, Stephen King-like horror movie that has one fatal flaw" There are just afew things wrong with this statement. First, there is nothing steven king like about this movie. Steven King shits better story lines than this movie. Second, This movie has alot more than 1 flaw, the whole movie is flawed. In fact, if you were to look up the definition of flaw in websters dictionary, it would tell you to watch dark floors. The fact that the "punk rock demons" were a flaw, is a flaw because they are the rock band lordi who helped produced the movie.On the DVD case it literally says "The Lordi motion picture." So a note to the movie reviewer, find a new job, or actually watch the movies that you review...please...All in all, "Dark Floors is the worst movie i've ever seen.
Posted by evris on May 29, 2009
Don't blame the movie if you are used to holywood movies which explain everything for the stupid audience. Use your mind, if you have any, to figure out what happened.
Posted by You on June 6, 2009
Suspense and mystery must be tied up in the end. This movie fails to do so. It becomes apparent that, while the producers would like you to think the randomly thrown together effects have a deeper meaning, it really doesn't.
Comparable to the ongoing "art" trend of throwing paint cans on a canvas and bullshitting deeper meanings.
Emperor's New Clothes, anyone?
Posted by Hitman on June 6, 2009
Dark Floor is as retarded as the retarded daughter of the lead.
Posted by on June 21, 2009
someone please explain wot the f*** the whole film is about. i just wasted 2 hours of my life for no reason, ending up completely confused and pissed off i wasted my money?!
there is no explaination to anything that happens in the film!!! the person that had the idea for this movie needs his or her own MRI scan!
Posted by Rob on July 12, 2009
I want the time wasted from this movie back, as well. Don't get me wrong, It was sort of interesting, I sat through it, but the ending was atrocious. Any wannabe hollywood writer could come up with something better then this load of crap. There was no coherent storyline other than the obvious, and there were pieces of the puzzle that wouldn't fit, or weren't there at all! (In analogy terms, anyway). Advice to anyone, don't waste your time with it.
Posted by A Stray on September 19, 2009
All you need to know is this; NOTHING in this movie is EXPLAINED, EVER. An audience CAN'T POSSIBLY CARE about characters, character relationships OR character deaths if they NEVER TOLD WHAT IS GOING ON. It's movies like this that are ruining the good name of horror.
Posted by Pariah on October 18, 2009
This one was surprisingly not as bad as I expected it to be. Not amazing, but better than most of the horror mevies that made it to theatres lately.
Posted by TWillard on November 3, 2009
I watched the movie, and unlike a lot of the Hollywood spoonfed garbage where they spell out every little thing as if you were more autistic than the little girl in the film, this movie lets you draw your own conclusions. Watching it with a couple of friends and a case of beer, we had a good night of discussion about it.
The movie's pretty good, but if you need every single thing spelled out for you and don't want to have to think about anything, go watch SAW instead.
Posted by NiNki on December 4, 2009
Well, it was a good movie.. I kinda enjoyed it .To be honest .the demons dressed up as the Lordi band members, took away the originality of the evil that was intended for this movie. As Twillard sed, yeah each viewer is expected to come up with their own conclusions. Sara's autism was what helped her communicate with that parallel universe ... But Y? why did it all happen so suddenly .I mean they were just exiting the hospital and ....WHALA... the enter into a new dimension . i have been rummaging through several sites looking for the correct meaning as the director had intended; but could find none. Finally ended up at this site. Need a correct explaination for this movie please? Preferably by the plot writer Pekka Lehtosaari ?
Posted by tardburger on February 14, 2010
All those idiots who say "blah blah blah... if you need everything spelled out for you blah blah etc etc", have not considered the fact that there are 1001 different possibilities as to the conclusion. In fact, there are infinite possibilities. It's a real shame coz the movie set up some decent premises but FAIL FAIL FAILED in the end. Like spending millions on solid foundations then building a paper building. This movie sucks ass. Don't watch it!
Posted by D-Faiz on April 24, 2010
Agree with TWillard, its better if you watch it with friends so you can discuss and debate about it,
Also agree with tardburger with budget over $ 4 million , its like building a castle using toilet paper, in the end its going down the shit hole.
Posted by DiZ on June 5, 2010
I think they were in another dimension of the hospital where everything is backwards.Times stops and probably space also.
Maybe the girl who always knew what was going to happen,was re-living the same thing.So she would draw it on that notepad but of course her drawings were scribbled.And the point of the LIGHt blue crayon in the ending was that she could not show what she was drawing.Anything very light can not be seen in a dark place.Since she had a dark crayon people can see what she was drawing.So maybe those "ghosts" who were controlling this other dimension didn't want the people to suspect something about the girl and re living knowledge.
Posted by DiZ on June 5, 2010
Yes, I also agree with TWillard.The movie is just about making your own conclusion so you don't go around like idiots saying bad insults to a movie you don't understand.If you don't understand it go see a rated G movie :l
Posted by Krellian24 on June 7, 2010
When I saw this movie, 20 minutes in, I thought it was going to be one of those movies that in the end everyone turns out to have already been dead. But, the ending left me like brain dead for all the bullshit that it was. I think the people who made this movie got bored with it and just threw any load of bull to the ending. I mean come on it's not hard to create a decent ending. They could've gone with the cliche'd ending that they all were dead in the first place. I even thought the "Scream Queen" could've been pinned as that autistic girl mom. Or even how it was all in the girls head. How that's what she saw in her head since its all jumbled. Lots and lots of good endings out in the world but they rather just end with all the bull restarting and leaving us in the dark. Honestly near the end when she starts to be all glowy and actually talks healthy, I was like wtf?! is up with chick. If i was the father at that point I would've bitch-slapped the shit out of her for pretending to be retarded. Good plot line, monsters could've been scarier, nothing is scary about some butch biker girls running aroundd being beastly. Who ever made this movie needs to really read the definition of Horror. This was about as scary as the Lovely Bones. >.>
Posted by tiernsee on June 11, 2010
I loved Lordi at Eurovision so was very keen to see this movie. Most definitely wasn't the worst film ever but would agree that it left too much unexplained. Personally I think that it was intended to be a representation of autism - the girl fighting er own autism in her head. The autistic condition being the dark and monsters. Probably completely wrong but it was the best my son and I could come up with! I did like the touch about the crayon with it changing from a red crayon to a blue crayon, My guess would be the whole cycle would happen again and next time it would be a green crayon, then a yellow...
Posted by on June 30, 2010
Rented this with a friend for a good fright-night.. Too bad the movie wasn't the least bit scary. I had the feeling i was watching some kind of Parody, like the scene they slammed the guy in the suit on the head with the fire-extinquisher while meaning to hit the demon. That was just retarded lol. My interpretation on the end is that the movie was a view inside the head of the girl. The whole movie is what went on in her imagination while she was laying in the MRI-scan. Maybe it was meant as some kind of perspective how schizophrenic / autistic people can experience the world. Really bad cases of schizophrenia can include very bad hallucinations as shown in the movie.
Posted by Josh on July 17, 2010
This movie just failed. Every 10 minutes a new plot point (or, to be more accurately said, random piece of crap) would be thrown in, and when I saw that it was getting close to the end, I was thinking about what sheer amount of hours *should've* been necessary to clear any of it up. There was potential for an interesting plot involving the time loop (or freeze? I can't remember which one they settled on), or the girl imagining it all, but it just couldn't decide, and branched off into a different (almost promising) plotline in each scene, only to scrap it and try something else the next. The comments here telling people to "use their imaginations" are equally sad, and the commenters themselves must be truly numb to movie quality to make such a statement. Might as well write a book made entirely out of the names of random Wikipedia articles, and tell anyone who "doesn't understand it" they don't have any imagination.
Posted by Chuck on October 11, 2010
"A pretty good horror movie from Finland (but shot in English and apparently set in the U.S.), "
Noup. It is made in Finland.
BR, I was assisting in the film. Interesting to see movie production even if the result isnt so fabulous. ;)
Posted by on June 12, 2011
I didn't understand this movie at all. At the beggining the girl asked for a red crown but at the end it was blue and she had some weird connection to the goth monster and she let her dad die and she barely talked but she talked to the monster, I did not understand what was going on at all.
Posted by Yo on June 1, 2012
The movie was kinda good, but if you want someone to hold your hand and explain everything then this movie no bueno for you. I watched it with my cousin and we talked about and we thought the movie was good. I thought the movie showed their decent to hell because the further they went down the worse the situation. I think the demons started their assult becaus the father was going to move her I guess showing some connection to the hospital or th fact that the little girl would be harder to get to if she left. That business guy was an ass but each character had their flaws but the little girl was the most innocent another reason why the demons wanted her. The little girl is drawing everything or at least the demons and no one notices but the old man is aware of the demons. He is also at the hospital which could mean their is some connection to it or is just as observant as the little girl or knew before. The guy complains about being cold and that could mean being souless. The old man also mentions the dad should know already so he could have promised something to the demons hence why he is the only one who could give up the daughter and the old man has already given his soul. The demons created a universe that would break them down and give up the girl or just die. By the end the girl removes the father form the situation because his love has killed everyone. When she confronts the demon she's glowing with light or her innocence. The demon I guess asks her to go with him but the girl refuses because she wants to return to her normal life and her innocence can't exist in the darkness or evil. She uses her light to return to the moment in the MRI which I think is the moment the dad wants to remove her. The old man informs her that he is not cold because he has his soul again which also means the demons would not return. The crayon is different because it marks a new beginning. That's what I thought. Oh and stop saying it's retarded and dome of y'all spelt it wrong.
Posted by Yo on June 1, 2012
Some not dome sorry auto correct
Posted by Steel Artist on October 5, 2012
I agree with Yo, although the plotline isn't as understandable as he makes it out to be as it basically falls apart towards the end and there are several other issues. How did the girl understand what the demon was "saying" and how did she suddenly become a glowing spirit? It does seem that a new beggining began, but if that was the case, why was the girl troubled when the old man mentioned not being cold anymore? Speaking of which, what was his story? It is obvious that he was/becomes the living dead type of character, but there is not any clues that indicates how he got that way or why nor is there really anything that hints towards why all of it happened to begin with which is by far the largest flaw.
Despite the flaws within the plotline though, it's something that I'm likely to watch again. It is somewhat original, interesting concepts, entertaining, and fair acting.
Posted by MeMyselfAndI on November 4, 2012
Watched this movie baked, didn't make it much better. I'm guessing that there is a different scenario for each color crayon? Don't really care because it blew huge Dong.
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Rank this film on a '666 scale' of one to six (left to right). Based on 1940 votes.
