No, he's just bad. And I hate to say that because I'm sure he's a nice guy, but when the best movies you ever stared in were "Dragonheart" and "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," it's time to rethink your profession.
When I describe a movie as painful, it's usually because I need to strap myself down or, in the case of Michael Bay, nail my hands to a desk to prevent me from hitting the stop button. It's the kind of pain where I start questioning my entire existence, and wonder what in the world I am doing with my life. That's what I usually mean when I'm referencing "pain."
I can't say that "Beneath The Darkness" hurt. Now, that's not saying it was good, because it wasn't. In fact, it was downright terrible. Awful. Wretched. But it didn't really hurt me, and I think it's because it was so uninspiring, so bland, and so boring that it really didn't do enough to cause me pain. It was basically like being in "time-out" for 90 minutes, like I've misbehaved and was forced to sit in the corner and stare at the wall for a while.
I can't really be enraged at a movie that just sits there. At least it didn't go out of its way to insult and torture me. It didn't care enough to do even that. And that's about the best thing I can say about "Beneath The Darkness": It was too dull to get mad at.
The story, as if anyone gives a crap, is about Dennis Quaid, a mortician in a small town that we see, at the beginning of the movie, is a killer. Then the film flash forwards to two years later when we meet our main characters, who are among the very finest in annoying jack-offs to be assembled in a teen "thriller." Through a little bit of harmless breaking and entering into Dennis Quaid's house, one of them ends up being killed because they forgot this is Texas and people have the right to kill anyone as long as that person is on their property. Oh, and Dennis Quaid's a crazy person. Either reason works really.
Your heroes, ladies and gentlemen. No refunds.
Anyways, the rest of the kids take matters into their own hands because none of the adults believe them and whatever. It doesn't matter. We already knew from the opening scene that Dennis Quaid is a killer, and we see that he's crazy on numerous occasions, so there is no tension because we know he really is the bad guy. And since this is a "thriller" for the teenies, we know from the moment the movie starts that the bad guy will get what's coming to him and the least macho of the boys will end up with the cheerleader at the end.
A more interesting film would have left it up in the air whether or not Dennis Quaid really was a killer until the end, or at the very least would not have had that as the opening scene. "Disturbia" had something of a similar concept, as did the movie it was inspired from, "Rear Window," and both those films had the benefit of tension, not because there's a scary killer in the room with you, although that does happen by the end, but because as an audience, you were in theory just as in the dark about the situation as the character was. That opens up a whole new avenue of ways to play with tension that "Beneath The Darkness" just threw away because there was never any doubt that Dennis Quaid was a crazy killer.
And seriously, what kind of killer smokes electronic cigarettes? Between that and his cute little sweaters, we're supposed to be afraid of this guy? Seriously? He dresses like Rick Santorum.
Look out, we got ourselves a badass over here...
THE BOTTOM LINE - A boring waste of time. Part of me did have fun with Quaid's absurdly forced "crazy" performance, as well as a handful of his howlingly bad one-liners, all delivered with an impressive poker face, but in the end it just wasn't worth it. There are plenty of better "entertainingly crazy" villains like Travolta's Vic Deakins from "Broken Arrow," Cage's Caster Troy from "Face/Off" and Walken's Gabriel from "The Prophecy" that I would much rather watch than Quaid's bumbling, giggly "someone PLEASE give me direction" performance. Skip it.
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