Dark Country

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Film Noir B-Movie directed by Thomas Jane. Starring Thomas Jane, Lauren German, Ron Perlman. A couple en route from Las Vegas are forced to deal with a body out in the desert making their honeymoon one hellish ride. The film was shot with the intention of being released in 3D format, but the studio chose to release it straight to DVD. Also features a cameo by Ron Perlman, for some reason.

Tropes used in Dark Country include:
  • Accidental Marriage: The film opens the morning after its leads get hitched in Las Vegas
  • A Date with Rosie Palms: see Auto Erotica
  • Auto Erotica: Complete with something bad directly following the act's conclusion.
  • B-Movie: At first it looks like its going to be a deconstruction, but questionable green screen effects and narmful acting will make sure this is remembered as one no matter what it's director's intent actually was.
  • Chroma Key: The film makes heavy use of green screen shooting. Probably as a result of being shot as a 3D release, many of the green screen shots have an extremely strange quality to them that borders on Special Effect Failure.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Gina has one, however it turns out to be a Red Herring.
  • Direct to Video
  • Film Noir: Almost to the extent of feeling like parody in the beginning, but played deadly straight from the second act on.
  • Fridge Horror: If you start trying to piece together what happened off screen between Dick finding Bloody Face's grave empty, to hearing gun shots from the rest area, to running into The Sheriff and seeing Gina's body dug up the horror will hit you like someone dropped a refrigerator on your head.
  • Future Me Scares Me
  • I Hate Past Me
  • Impassable Desert: A very weird paranormal take on this trope.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: Lightning seems to accompany each shift in time
  • Narm: Jane's portrayal of Dick is practically a trope codifier.
  • Narm Charm: For all Dick's narmfullness, there's still something likeable about the guy.
  • No Ending: Thanks to the stable timeloop, we have don't know for sure who killed Gina (although there's one strong suspect), or the other women for that matter. We have no idea why the cars at the rest stop had been there for so long even when the rest stop was still "open", or how the location of the rest stop moved from about a mile from Bloody Face's grave to almost on top of it. And then there's a matter of that map in the rest stop...
  • Screwed by the Network: Jane not only feels releasing the movie on dvd instead of its intended 3D theatrical format hurt the film, the final cut is far from his favorite one.
  • Special Effect Failure: Partially averted. While a lot of the green screen shots look extremely strange, this actually works fairly well with the surreal mood of the film. Only a few shots fail outright.
  • Stable Time Loop: This would seem to be what Dick and Gina have wondered in to
  • The Sheriff: Ron Perlman, in a memorable bit part
  • The Reveal: The final moments of the film has a big one.
  • The Un-Reveal: The Reveal is also a giant Unreveal, answering one question but putting basically everything else up for grabs.
  • What Could Have Been: The movie was shot with a 3D theatrical release in mind. While it's unlikely the film would have found much more than cult movie success at the box office, just the ice cube scene alone would have been worth the price of admission.