Psychiatrist with a brain tumor spends a weekend with her husband and sister at their cabin. A knock on the door brings a young man who turns out to have a gun. Shortly thereafter, another man arrives, and he turns out to be a former patient of the doctor's, and he wants revenge. While he was in her care, he was given injections of an experimental drug that the doctor was trying on him as a guinea pig because they both have the same type of brain tumor. As the victims are held hostage, psychological games are played; I don't understand why except there has to be a reason to make this movie. Secrets are revealed, of course. I got confused at the end. I must have missed something because it didn't make any sense to me at all. But I give this film 5 stars for the good acting and the dialogue.

Good idea, fairly intriguing story, but to reveal something you first have to hide it.This has a touch of Mulholland Dr, as the heroine deludes herself over a sequence of events that ends in horror.I'm up for it, but the problem is we know we're through the looking glass too early on, and it turns out the explanation is the one we guessed straight up.There's a great performance by the psycho, and I liked the reveal on the identity of his sidekick (although strictly the psycho is not yet a ghost).Apart from the heroine and the psycho, it was impossible not to get annoyed at the characters - not sure what the film makers intended there. Maybe they should have let the game playing go on a bit more to mix up the heroine's feelings about the characters.Production is good, but music minimal and almost ineffective.

Like a brain surgeon's deftly wielded scalpel sinking into grey matter, skillful manipulation of cinematic elements merges with subtle transpositions in The Dark Hours. Along with clever segue-ways and strategically positioned ambiguity, The Dark Hours' filmmakers blur the line between objective and subjective reality in this fast-moving nail biter. It's engrossing, captivating, slickly edited and well-acted. Get ready for some disturbing twists and an unsettling climax.The Dark Hours keeps us guessing, dangling over the precipice between our home theater easy chairs, contemplating "what ifs," and fretting over what will happen next. And what happens next is just ... well just awful! For the characters in the story, that is.When institutional head-shrinker, Samantha Goodman (Kate Greenhouse) takes refuge from a personal crisis in her secluded snowbound cabin, she expects a quiet weekend with her aspiring novelist husband David (Gordon Currie) and sister Melody (Irius Graham). A worn expression about best-laid plans comes to mind, as one thing, something terrible, leads to another.Much of the action takes place after dark in Sam's remote abode, illuminated in a flickering amber candle and fireplace glow. There's a claustrophobic feeling inside the bungalow, which contrasts with the utter desolateness of the wide open, frozen tundra nightscape upon which it vulnerably sits. Hanging precariously by only a few threads, a wispy, gauze-like veneer of sanity separates the known from the uncertain. Only the cabin's frail wooden door insulates the occupants from infiltration by malevolent elements which might appear from anywhere out in the night. Indeed, such elements come knocking and once that creaky door is opened, sheer hell breaks loose.Instead of her hoped-for introspective interlude with David, from whom Samantha desperately requires emotional support, she instead discovers she's trapped in a love triangle between David and Melody. Just as Sam starts to unravel the details, the arrival of a duo of lunatics (literally) disrupts her family affair.The more the merrier, however, as the uninvited guests intend to help Sam acquire some truly objective perspective about her situation -and theirs. One of the interlopers is a patient, Harlan (Aidan Devine), with whom Samantha has a controversial history. He's escaped, and now with twitchy teenage protégé Adrian (Dov Tiefenbach) in tow, Harlan wants to impress upon Sam that he never much cared for her less-than-Hippocratic bedside manner.To boot, Harlan plans to help Sam sort out her domestic and professional issues, Jungian style. Or maybe just Nietzsche and Dr. Mengele style. Because while Harlan's diseased cerebrum is squirming like a toad, it turns out his is not the only one. Harlan detects that all present are in need of a little "psycho" therapy. Delightfully, he just happens to have a treatment regimen in mind for everyone -one which champions truth, illumination, and ... well this won't hurt a bit.OK, maybe just a LITTLE! Because it's going to start with some excruciatingly morbid games, games at gunpoint which involve a telephone, a diary and pair of cutting pliers.As the quintet prepare to venture on a schizophrenic journey of enlightenment, seamless perceptual juxtapositions provide an eerie insight to the escalating chain of developments, some of which are relayed via foreboding flashbacks and non-linear plot points. What ensues is pure bedlam when all involved spiral into a swirling maelstrom of horrid revelations and bloody confrontation.

I can not say enough good things about "The Dark Hours". Don't let the unoriginal title phase you, this flick is exactly what the horror genre needs. This is a type of film that requires every second of your attention, for every little action comes back and ties in at the end. Performances are believable all-around, and Adian Devin makes a brilliant villain, simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. The film is exceptionally well shot on its tiny budget (less than a half-million Canadian dollars). Paul Fox has truly done a bang-up job on his directional debut here. His style and visual creativity elevate what is already a great film and makes it both intellectually stimulating AND a feast for the eye. Wil Zmak's script is intelligent and never underestimates its audience, and the ending will leave a definite mark on your mind. I'd also like to point out the music score, which was downright brilliant. As a film score fan I can say that even though this score will unfortunately never see a CD release it is quite a remarkable and original score. Gore fans will get a kick out of the finger scene as well. Really great horror film; simply not to be ignored. Why can't we have more films like this?