Main cast: Matt Lauria (Guy), Natalie Martinez (Jennifer Robbins), Arnie Pantoja (Eddie), and Christina Leone (Ruby)
Director: Daniel Stamm
Oh, I get it. Into the Dark is just one of the few ghetto outlets to dump the films of Blumhouse Productions that they know will never make the cut, because selling cheaply- and quickly-made crap to streaming is a faster and easier way to bring in the money, right? I mean, that has to explain the rapid dip this show takes in terms of quality after a short promising start.
Down is about a man, Guy, and a woman, Jennifer Robbins, trapped in an elevator late one evening. Oh dear, it’s a holiday weekend, so who knows when the repair crew will show up. Hence, for thirty freaking minutes, I am subjected to these two talking first about awkward things that strangers typically talk about when they are stuck together with nothing else to do, then they start talking raunchy stuff, and yay, they have sex.
On the plus side, we get to see Matt Lauria’s heaving, thrusting behind.
On the minus side, I think I can iron my laundry on that rear end, because that’s how flat it is. Somebody get this fellow to start doing more squats regularly, STAT, because flat is only sexy when it’s the stomach we’re talking about.
Now, under normal circumstances, this is going to be one of those Fifty Shades of Grey erotic romance knock-offs. Heaven knows, Guy is crazy enough to be a hero in such a romance. Unfortunately for Jennifer, this is Into the Dark, so her life is now in danger, not rapture, because she has let crazy inside her.
This is a pretty standard Lifetime woman-in-danger stuff, only with sexy thrusting flat ass that one will never see in actual Lifetime movies, complete with the villain doing an uncharacteristically super dumb thing in the end just so that Jennifer can have her final woman glory moment. Jennifer is portrayed as this hard-ass modern woman that can compartmentalize love and sex well, but this show also punishes her for putting out, so the whole thing kind of negates the feminism, yay angle it is going for. Matt Lauria plays a typical crazy nice guy like such villains always are in such movies—generic, in other words—and he doesn’t even have the grace to get his butt all perky when he knows he has to bare it all on screen. Hello, what happened to dedication to the craft?
At any rate, Down ranks pretty down there when it comes to memorability and entertainment. It feels like any stock and formulaic “career woman and a crazy guy in an office building” show. It’s not particularly terrible, but at the same time, it is also in trouble when the only thing I can recall of this episode is my utmost disappointment at being presented with a flat bare butt. I just want one nice memory to take away from this show. Is it too much to ask?
