As most of you probably are all too aware of by now, I enthusiastically backed the Kickstarter to turn Jack Chick’s infamous Dark Dungeons comic into a movie. For the few that read here and who aren’t aware, Jack Chick is a… well, he’s a cartoonist that has drawn and published some incredibly horrible, hate-filled, and just generally awful tracts that are ostensibly about how great Christianity is, but seem sometimes more like the agitprop that Satan would have written in order to discredit Christianity. Chick has quite the ironic following, however, because it doesn’t matter who you are and what you do: Jack Chick has drawn a tract attacking you.
And the greatest of his tracts has got to be Dark Dungeons, which reveals how Satan will destroy the world via roleplaying games. This led JR Ralls to – and I still don’t know how he managed to wrangle permission* – convince Jack Chick Publications to grant him the film rights to the comic, and for Ralls to produce the Dark Dungeons movie. I have finally gotten a chance to watch it, and will discuss it after the fold.
First off, let us dispense with the formalities. JR Ralls and the cast to this movie have been admirably straight-faced on the subject and will probably continue to be so, but let us be honest: none of them really believe in the film’s central message. What they have tried to do instead, and I think that they succeeded here, was to present the original source material as its author intended it to be presented. If Jack Chick Publications actually had its own movie studio, it would have produced a movie just like this. Only less well done.
Pros: As noted above, Dark Dungeons played it admirably straight. It would have been easy to give this movie an I-hate-Christianity subtext; the director instead wisely decided to go with a Wait-gamers-are-supposed-to-be-uber-popular? subtext, instead, which is frankly more entertaining. This is a movie that caters to the gaming community, in fact: there are shout-outs and Easter Eggs a go-go. The actors did a credible job, especially when you consider the source material; and the non-special-effects production values were honestly, erm, produced.
Cons: Yeah. That script. Not the director’s or the scriptwriter’s fault, but if you’re looking for suspension of disbelief, you’re not going to find it here. Likewise, the special effects budget was… not up to Pixar levels. Both of these are external to the movie**; I suppose that my most strenuous internal objection would be that the writer and director apparently decided to provide an implied subtext to Debbie and Marcie’s relationship that was absent from the original, and probably not even considered by Jack Chick himself. This is a minor quibble, though; possibly those involved could simply not help themselves.
Either/Neither: The movie is rather short (less than an hour; the behind the scenes video is longer). This may or may not be a problem for people. There’s also some Cthulhu stuff, which is supposedly stuff that they got from Chick’s website. May still bug people who are done with all of this Cthulhu talk.
All in all: I got my money’s worth from this. You can watch it online here for five bucks; get your friends together, watch it, then roll for initiative.
Moe Lane
*I think I know the reason, though: Jack Chick Publications probably thinks that a truly honest adaptation of the comic tract will benefit their cause. …Well, good luck with that, neighbor.
**Normally a script is not external to the movie; but here they’re working under what is a very artificial set of restrictions.