LA PRIGIONE OSCURA

Alessandro and Beatrice are a very young couple who move into a new house near Ischia. Already from the first night, Beatrice begins to have terrible nightmares in which she sees corpses and rivers of blood. The girl's situation worsens day by day, and Alessandro's mental stability also begins to waver. It all seems to be linked to the house and the dark past of its previous tenant... Unlike many of his colleagues who prefer to try their hand at short films, the very young Salvatore R. Di Costanzo debuts in the audiovisual field directly with a feature film, "The Dark Prison". Di Costanzo clearly draws inspiration from great classics such as "Amityville Horror" and "Shining", and thus builds a thriller with supernatural connotations that plays equally with atmosphere and gore and the most brutal violence. We'll start by saying that the film oozes goodwill from every single shot, as is evident the great effort that such an operation has required, but during the viewing it is equally evident that this is a debut work made by an artist still a bit green, who nevertheless demonstrates having undoubtedly taken the right path. Indeed, what stands out most in "The Dark Prison" is the confidence and the great care of the direction, always attentive to the right shots, often capable of making even the most familiar environment unsettling. In the same way, one can notice an excellent care for the sets and the photography, on which it is evident that a lot of work has been done to always keep them in tune with the psychological estrangement that the film's characters undergo. The interiors of the villa where the good 90% of the film is set often reflect the mental confusion of the two protagonists, as does the beautiful photography that alternates warm and pastel colors (red and orange especially) with dark and cold tones. What "The Dark Prison" convinces little of is the screenplay, written by the same director, which seems to proceed in fits and starts, as if there were not a real underlying idea capable of bringing the story to a real turn. The film indeed proceeds by accumulation of small details that are often completely abandoned, as if the various clues scattered during the protagonist's investigation were not really important for the resolution of the affair. The dialogues often do not convince and sometimes appear almost improvised. All this gives a sense of fragmentation to the work and weighs down the viewing, a sensation accentuated by the excessive duration of the feature film (about 108 minutes). Indeed, the film would have certainly had a greater impact with some further cuts, perhaps reducing the duration to the canonical 90 minutes, shortening especially the long dream sequences and the collisions (especially verbal) between the two protagonists. The model and debut actress Italo-French Elodie Serra lends her face to the protagonist and demonstrates that she more than holds her own in a role that involves considerable physical and emotional participation. The rest of the cast suffers a bit from the acting improvisation to which low-budget Italian productions are almost always linked, starting with Salvatore R. Di Costanzo who also plays the role of co-protagonist in the guise of Alessandro, who gives us a character at times too caricatured, especially in the characterization of the descent into madness, characterized by inexplicable outbursts of anger, wicked look and cavernous voice. Very good and well used the soundtrack, which alternates original music with tracks from the death metal group "Clinically Dead". In conclusion, "The Dark Prison" is certainly an "experiment" interesting that has however suffered considerably from the inexperience of the production; the young director has nevertheless demonstrated to handle himself very well behind the camera and to have an undoubted talent. We therefore await a new work for a definitive judgment, perhaps advising to adopt the language of the short film, surely less expensive and more inclined to experimentation.