Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie Review

"Beneath the waves, secrets run deep."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown May 8, 2024

There are hidden gems in independent film. Art pieces that defy budgetary constraints, production challenges and other hurdles, emerging as diamonds in the rough that rightfully earn a cult audience and propel their otherwise unknown filmmakers and actors to stardom. Dark Waves is not one of those films. As disappointing as its Blu-ray coverart, director Domiziano Cristopharo's stab at, ahem, "romantic horror" is an indulgent misfire, attempting to wax poetic and mine meaning out of an overly simplistic tale as boring as it is hollow. Cristopharo and writer Andrea Cavaletto see... something in scene after scene, closeup after closeup, of a married couple working through issues from their pasts, but the result is decidedly unsexy, unflattering, and weirdly uncinematic.

Dark Waves offers a short synopsis -- "When two young lovers find rare gold, they embark on a dark adventure filled with zombie pirates seeking revenge" -- very little of which actually represents the film you'll watch if you take the plunge. The zombie pirates mentioned (as if this is pulpy comic-book horror fare) do next to nothing other than sit the bench until the film's final surrealist push, making this much more of a languid, dreamy indie snoozer about two married oddballs in love... who are together for some reason. Chemistry and passion is sorely lacking between actors David D'Ingeo and Nancy de Lucia, to say the least, and there's nothing about the relationship between Sophiane and Jazira as presented that convinces. Antonella Salvucci is far more effective as *sigh* The Sin, which is as on-the-nose as it sounds. Instead, D'Ingeo and de Lucia sleepwalk from scene to scene, her blank face ever aloof, his strangely bony features ever furrowed, and neither manages to draw us in or move us to care about anything that transpires.

The story of French ex-Legionnaire Sophiane is a slowburn-and-a-half as he and his wife, Jazira, move into an ancient tower on a remote piece of seashore far from civilization. When he finds three gold nuggets and gifts them to Jazira, supernatural strangeness ensues. Forced to face their pasts, Sophiane and his not-so-one true love soon discover that the bits of gold are really the teeth of three pirates who return from the dead to reclaim their... dentures? (Credit where credit's due. That's a new one.) As commitment is tested and vows strained, Sophiane must come to terms with his mistakes and decide who he is and who he isn't. If only D'Ingeo, Cavaletto, Cristopharo or anyone in the crew knew the answer. Which no one seems to know. Cue starkly colored cinematography, laborious scoring, and off-kilter imagery meant to evoke a hypnotic vision of love lost that evokes nothing of the sort.

As shallow and mean-spirited as it sounds, the most interesting thing about Dark Waves is D'Ingeo's face, which borders on cro-magnon. Whenever the film bored me to tears -- literally, my eyes began to water as the minutes ticked by -- I found solace in trying to crack the code of Sophiane's eyes and perpetually befuddled expression. De Lucia is much easier to ignore. Her performance is a blank slate, with so little to take in that she may as well be a beautiful cardboard cutout. It's probably not her fault. The direction given seems to lead her towards being a slack-faced object of affection. Period. All stop. She's presented as lofty, haunting and unobtainable, perhaps even impenetrable; a woman who's more of an abstract concept representing Sophiane's past than a human being in his present. The lead performances are so repetitive that it's hard to tell where the lovers are headed, other than further and further into a film that doesn't care where it's going or how silly its climactic pirate zombies look. By the time Sophiane is stumbling across a beach, staring at a white horse as creatures who couldn't turn a doorknob somehow breach his tower, you'll be yearning for the end credits. Or coming to as the credits roll, wondering where exactly you fell asleep.

Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ooph. A product of its low-fi indie nature, Dark Waves features a terribly problematic 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation that may or may not be true to its source. While no doubt a decent representation of the film as it was shot, the behind-the-scenes featurette on the disc surprisingly offers more refined detail, richer colors and better contrast in its clips than we get in the actual transfer. Strange but so it goes. The palette is continually bathed in blue and green light, leaving skintones cold and unconvincing. Black levels never seem to descend deeper than a dark, heathered blue, while fine textures are soft and unrevealing. A handful of closeups offer better clarity but not much, giving Dark Waves a decidedly DVD-esque appearance on more than one occasion. Add to that a host of small issues that amass to create a big problem -- macroblocking, banding, bleeding and other anomalies -- and you have a picture as confounding as the film itself.

Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dark Waves doesn't offer any lossless audio option. Its Italian-language Dolby Digital stereo track is adequate I suppose, but there's a detachment between the dialogue, the score and the rest of the soundscape that never ceases to distract. Prioritization favors the actors' voices but that's hardly a compliment, as the rest of the mix sounds much more like a cheap European TV production from the '90s. Intentional? Maybe. Disappointing? Absolutely.

Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extras offered are a Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (HD, 10 minutes) that's bizarrely presented in Italian only (without subtitles), the film's trailer, and a photo gallery.

Dark Waves Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If there's a saving grace to Dark Waves it's D'Ingeo's magnificent face. No sarcasm. Look at it. You want to know more, don't you? So did I, though the film never offers anything more than those sharp lines and eerie eyes framed in that scraggly hair. I wish there was a more compelling indie here to rave about. Alas, nothing but ranting awaits all those who enter here. Dark Waves's Blu-ray release isn't much better, no thanks to a problematic video presentation, a ho-hum stereo mix and a small smattering of supplements that doesn't bother to include subtitles. Skiiiip!