Dark Secrets DVD Review

“Help me” silently yell out two crayoned words on a little girl’s vanity mirror, and after that her celebrity actress mother (Kate Thurlwell) and motor-cross racing father (Gary Daniels) don’t see her – or any traces of her – anymore. Not so for Detective Farrell (Steven Elliott), who constantly sees a young girl in a white nightgown that he thinks represents the missing Dallas (Paige Lees) in his dreams or blipping swiftly across his television screen. Eventually he fears that these hallucinations are driving him crazy!

Dark Secrets, released on DVD by MTI Home Video on April 7th, and written and directed by Frank Falco, is exactly about that – secrets, and why and to whom they’re strangely and randomly revealed. Helped by his partner, Detective Radcliffe (Ben Shockley), Farrell sets out to bring his visions to fruition amidst a series of confusing clues and a plethora of misinformation. The same apparition of the girl in the white nightgown leads him to the rescue of another terrified girl hidden behind a sofa in an abandoned home with large Arabic writing all over the downstairs walls. Dallas’s mother Lori guiltily decides that her daughter’s disappearance must be her fault, and Dallas’s father Darryl claims that he and his wfie have no ulterior motives because all of their accrued wealth will be passed on to their daughter.

A book of rhymes written in childish script keeps Farrell intrigued with puzzles like “Birds of a feather flock together and so will pigs and swan”, as do references to a “Mr. Nobody.” Farrell’s past alcoholism and the death of his wife in a car accident also plague him, and his anger mounts until he assaults his next door neighbor for turning up his TV set too loudly.

Whose obligation is it to find all the lost children of the world, their sad ghosts crying out about the injustice of their innocent slaughter? The mother of a third missing child (a girl also blighted by cerebral palsy who already had a very constricted life) begs Farrell to keep trying to find her too.

Who is this Mr. Nobody who can slip into highly secured estates and run off with society’s children?
Farrell finally asks for help from a psychic who can see what the rest of us cannot and also reveals one of Farrell’s personal secrets. Rated R, Dark Secrets is for older teenagers and adults, not for the age 11 group especially (since most of the kidnapped children in it are about that age) because it might give them nightmares!

You will not be able to anticipate the unusual conclusion of Dark Secrets, where the world of the dead leads us back to the mysteries of the living. Farrell stands by his creed – “to preserve life” (wishing that everyone else would comply so that there would never be any murders), and he does everything he can (with a little help from the supernatural) as a means to that end to find out what has happened to the children.

Dark Secrets DVD Review by Christina Zawadiwsky of Movie Room Reviews

Tags: Dark Secrets DVD