TUBI CONTINUED: THE PHOTOGRAPHER: INSIDE THE DARK ROOM (2016) ***

Tubi recommended this to me immediately after I watched Fright:  Night of Fear, so I figured, what the hell?  As it turns out, it made for a perfect double feature.  For one, both movie titles are incorrect on Tubi.  Secondly, both are less than an hour long.  Third, both films have similar plots.  And finally (and most interestingly), both have little to no dialogue.  I was hopeful that this too was going to be a silent movie, but as it turns out, people started talking about fifteen minutes into the flick.  Oh well.  That’s certainly longer than most films can go without dialogue. 

Although Tubi has this listed as 2011’s The Photographer:  Inside the Mind of a Psycho, it’s actually the sequel, The Photographer:  Inside the Dark Room, which was released five years later.  Now, I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t comment on it, but I’ll be sure to track it down based solely on the strength of the sequel. 

Models receive invitations to pose for a mysterious photographer.  They all wind up imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.  The cops are eventually called in to investigate. 

That might not sound like a lot of plot, but trust me, it’s all the plot you need for something like this.  The photo sessions are the real reason this thing exists.  They contain a mix of bondage, glamor, and cheesecake photo spreads.  There’s also a random music video sequence in there to help pad out the running time.  I will say that the police procedural scenes are really the only thing that slows things down.  Heck, even with the abbreviated running time, it feels a little long in places.  Despite those qualms, it’s a surprisingly solid thriller. 

The slashing scenes really work too.  One model is imprisoned in an oversized Guinea pig cage and forced to drink from an oversized pet bottle.  In another scene, a model is tied up while another woman is forced to… shall we say… entertain her.  Heck, even the reveal of the photographer’s identity is surprisingly well done. It might sound weird, but The Photographer:  Inside the Dark Room almost plays like a (slightly) classier English version of a W.A.V.E. Production (but with better production values).  Even with that comparison, it manages to be more effective than not.   

AKA:  The Photographer 2:  Inside the Dark Room.