Director – Geno McGahee (Love Spell, Scary Tales)
Starring – Lorrie Bacon (Deadly Western, Fatal Justice), Phil Godeck (Scary Tales: Dark Walker, Scary Tales: Dead Zone), and Lindsey DeLand (Beyond Files, Love Spell)
Release Date – 2026
Rating – 1/5
I love watching indie horror movies. I don’t care if it’s a good movie, bad movie, a movie with several thousands dollars as a budget, or made with no budget at all. I love finding random movies on Tubi and watching them as I play random cozy games or Marvel Snap.
Several months back I was sent a press release for the 2026 occult horror film Dark Places from director Geno McGahee and how the film was hitting Tubi. I made note of this to watch sometime later when I was caught up on my reviews and completely forgot about. However, that changed when I was scrolling through the horror section and found the film. I decided to give it a spin and review it for fun.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a young girl who was home schooled and now attends college. She is a bit awkward and doesn’t have a lot of friends but does meet a young man. The two seem to hit it off fairly early on but something is strange about him. He doesn’t really have any friends and before she knows it she finds herself in the middle of a murder that could be connected to a Satanic ritual. **Spoiler Alert**
I should have known that this one was going to be a tough one to sit through when every poster I had seen for the film was made using A.I. I didn’t let that stop me as I have a fondness for films centered around cults. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that this one was going to be a tough one to finish.
The acting in this one is extremely stiff and inexperienced. The characters are not written that well which doesn’t really give the cast a lot to work with. However, a lot of the dialogue exchanges feels like a table read. They are just spitting out their words with no conviction. This made the movie feel a lot longer than it should have while creating some seriously unintentionally funny moments.
The story for this one feels like it was written by someone who never had access to the internet or documentaries about cults until they were well into their adulthood. The movie almost plays out like it was written by someone that believed all the local news broadcasts during the height of the Satanic Panic. While that, in itself, could have been a highly entertaining film, it fails to pull anything enjoyable together. It has the worst pacing I’ve seen in a movie in years and the unlikable characters and flat performances makes it damn near impossible to finish.
Finally, those looking for a high body count and fun deaths will be very disappointed. We might get a little blood but nothing that stands out or is memorable. Overall, Dark Places is a tough one to finish and one I cannot recommend unless you want to drink with some friends and laugh at something. Skip it.
