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REIGN IN DARKNESS
Rating: 
Australia. 2002.
Directors/Screenplay/Producers – David Allen & Kel Dolen, Photography – Dennys Ilic, Music – John Clifford White, Digital Effects Supervisor – David Lawrence, Special Effects Supervisor – Clint Dodd, Production/Conceptual Design – Rapidfire Productions. Production Company – Rapidfire Productions.
Cast:
Kel Dolen (Michael Dorn), Chris Kerrison (Lance Bates), David No (Gage), John Barresi (Raphael Ravenscroft/Dr Pedro Swit), David Allen (Alex Shaw)
Plot: Michael Dorn is a virologist conducting research on the virus RKV-17, using homeless people as experimental subjects. His mysterious backers, known only as The Council, tell him the virus might offer a cure for HIV. But when one of the homeless people struggles, Michael ends up accidentally jabbing himself with a syringe containing the viral serum. The bounty hunter Lance, who works as hired muscle to the project, attempts to shoot Michael but Michael flees. On the run, Michael finds that he now has a constant need to devour blood and is turning into a vampire. But at the same time The Council hire Lance and the vampire crossbreed Gage to track down and eliminate him.
The Australian vampire movie has always been a rather variable affair. There was one interesting effort that didn’t quite make it – Thirst (1979) – and two that definitely didn’t – Outback Vampires (1987) and Bloodlust (1992). Reign in Darkness alas does nothing to reverse the trend. The film appears to have been made as a very low-budget affair, although did enjoy a modestly successful worldwide video release. Multi-tasking directors/screenwriters Kel Dolen and David Allen also play two of the central characters – Dolen is the vampire hero on the run, while Allen is the supervisor of the lab who gets killed part way through.
Reign in Darkness is a vampire film that has clearly been construed in light of the success of The Matrix (1999). The whole film feels like a single Matrix-inspired pose – everybody is outfitted in black leather and vinyl, long black coats, shades, there are lots of posed slow-motion gunfights, martial arts scenes and sword and knife wavings. Dialogue seems to come in taunts, snarls and teeth-bared insults. It might have worked had there been a decent budget attached to the film. But without, it all does seem a rather paper-thin pose that never amounts to anything more than posturing. Other vampire films like Blade II (2002) and Underworld (2003) have been far more successful at incorporating Matrix inspired poses than Reign in Darkness.
And while one appreciates Reign in Darkness was made on a very low budget (and must be commended for doing a great deal with it), there are times that the action come a little cramped. This is most amusing when it comes to the car chases. Clearly Allen and Dolen have managed to borrow the use of a couple of expensive cars for these scenes – although apparently with orders not to scratch them so that when one of the cars is shot at, it merely skids to a neat halt rather than crashes, while the explosions of the supposedly crashing cars are never shown.
Reign in Darkness has a good central premise – the idea of a new vampire on the run being hunted by assassins at the same time as he tries to understand his condition – all of which would make for a fine film some day. And there is certainly a glimmer of an original idea at the heart of the film – of vampires trying to develop a genetically-engineered cure for themselves as their lungs have not evolved to deal with pollution. Alas the rest of Reign in Darkness tends to buy into what have become modern vampire movie cliches – the connection between vampirism and AIDS, secret vampiric cabals pulling the strings of power, genetically-engineered human-vampire crossbreeds.
David Allen and Kel Dolen subsequently made the horror film The Gates of Hell (2008).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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