Did I Seriously Just Watch That? - Baldwin Torture Porn Edition

The Baldwins feature among their number this guy named Daniel -- or, as IMDB states his family calls him, Danny. Sure, he's done a
 lot of different stuff, some of it even worth paying attention to (see Homicide: Life on the Streets), but I'd have to say that these days, Danny's claim to fame is that he looks like a chubby, beat-up version of his brother Alec. In 2009, Danny (or "fake Alec" as I prefer to think of him) played a serial killer in the completely abysmal film, A Darker Reality. As far as I can tell, the entire reason that this film was made was to place a guy who looks reasonably like Alec Baldwin (not hard when you're his brother) in a torture porn movie like the Saw franchise.

Do not watch this film.

And that's from the guy who explained how to watch Lifeforce and survive.

Just don't do it.

I understand that me saying "don't do something" is akin to saying to many of you "you should totally do this thing," but really, I never thought that I would have to invent the following phrase, much less use it to explain anything ever:

Torture Porn Done Wrong

Some people are shaking their heads and puzzling through that. "Isn't all torture porn, by definition, done wrong?" Yup. And this even gets that wrong.

So really, just don't do it. Even you, +Jez Gordon . It's not worth it.

And if you ignore even that warning (and the fact that I can't find enough decent images from the movie to fill up space in this post), here's some of what you'll be treated to:


  • Dr. Tits McGee and her incredibly inappropriate work attire. Tube tops apparently are good ideas at hospitals.
  • Detective Badatmyjob is grumbly and gruff like every other movie detective but with the added bonus of being entirely ineffectual, incredibly poorly-acted and, when it comes right down to it, completely tangential to the plot.
  • Danny B (I now prefer to think of Daniel Baldwin as "Danny B," and he breaks with his crew on the mean streets like he's straight out of Breakin' 2) plays a ludicrously over-the-top clown of a psychopath complete with pointless overdubs from his "how I got to be an idiotic serial torturer/killer" memoir. 
  • Seriously, this Danny B is hard to swallow. Not only does he come off as clownishly terrible, but comes off like a Baldwin. Snarky, smug, condescending. A fucking Baldwin. 
  • Unimaginative gore. I'm the sort of sick fuck who wants his torture porn to do new and exciting things in the torture and murder departments. 
  • Danny B has a retarded torture assistant. Literally retarded. I see no point in this and it serves to merely make the whole thing come off as less serious. I'm fine with less-serious gory movies, but "lightening the mood" in a torture porn flick just seems remarkably tasteless. Normally, I can do tasteless, but tasteless plus bad acting plus terrible plot plus velveeta-grade cheese makes the whole thing come off as the bad sort of amateurish, like the folks who insisted on playing Malkavian antitribu because "crazy is cool." Fuck you. You don't get to use that as an excuse for sucking.
Now, I need to watch I Spit On Your Grave to get the bad taste of A Darker Reality out of my brain. 

Fucking horrible. 

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