Dark by Noon (2013)

Time-travel thriller

This film is set in an alternate time, a world where history has unfolded differently. Rez played by Patrick Buchanan (Belfast Story) lost his wife sometime in the past. Now heist a man abandoned by society, but he possesses a gift: the perfect photographic memory, but having perfect recall isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. A covert government agency headed by Rez’s old mentor Haycock – played by Anthony Murphy (Charlie Casanova, Dawn of the Dragonslayer) has stolen a device called ‘Titus’; a machine that has the ability to send a person eight hours into the future, but only for a short period. The organisation is making millions by recording advance knowledge of the stock market, heisting the future eight hours at a time. One day Rez leaps forward in time and witnesses a nuclear explosion. As he jumps back to his own time-line, events begin to spiral out of control as he only has eight hours to discover the cause and save his estranged daughter and a city.

We don’t get enough made-in-Ireland sci-fi … but, having seen this, I hope we never get any more. My partner declared this “the worst film I’ve ever seen”; it would definitely feature in my Top 10 or even Top 5. The only likeable thing about this atrocious turkey is that it’s fairly short, about 90 minutes. Other than that it’s simply hateful in every respect, from the utter incomprehensibility of it all, to the unprepossessing and unsympathetic leading-man, who was in virtually every shot. I got this DVD in a bargain-bucket in my local supermarket (repackaged as ‘Earth Apocalypse’); I wish I’d left it there.

Directed by Alan Leonard
Starring: Patrick Buchanan, Tim Dillard, Grace Fitzgerald