Beneath The Darkness (2011)

After watching their best friend get murdered, a group of teens struggle to expose a local hero as the vicious killer and keep from becoming his next victims. 

Beneath the Darkness is an American horror-thriller film directed by Martin Guigui, and starring Tony Oller, Dennis Quaid, Devon Werkheiser and Aimee Teegarden.

Ely Vaughn (Quaid) is a pillar of the community in tiny Smithville, Texas. The town's mortician, Ely has been revered since his days as the high school's star quarterback. But since the tragic death of his wife two years earlier, Ely has withdrawn from his neighbors, while local teens spread stories of supernatural goings on at Ely's mansion-which is also the funeral home. When high school friends Travis (Oller), Abby (Teegarden), Brian (Lunsford) and Danny (Werkheiser) decide to check out the rumors, they are shocked to see the supposedly grieving widower dancing with a mysterious woman behind the curtains of his bedroom window. Their curiosity aroused, the four teens wait for Ely to leave the house before breaking in to investigate. But instead of finding clues to the woman's identity, they stumble on a grotesque, long-hidden secret. The sadistic mortician next door will now stop at nothing to literally bury his past.

That's not a treasure chest he just dug up.

 This movie is pretty bad...no really bad. Dennis Quaid as a crazed mortician...how do you fuck that up?  You do it with characters that are 2 dimensional and there is never a moment of suspense.  You figure out all the answers way before hand.  I found Quaid way over the top and unbelievable in this role. The supporting cast are no more than adequate at best.

I'm not sure the film knows what it's trying to be.  I think it's trying to be a horror movie as there's graveyard stuff and premature burials but nothing really supernatural is going on. Beneath the Darkness could have been a much better movie with some improvements. The second half of the film is so dark it's impossible to see anything.  It's like watching a radio broadcast.

It sucks to bang some guy's wife and then get buried alive.

I would suggest you avoid this scare free flick. There's nothing in Beneath the Darkness you haven't seen before, better, and recently.  This movie should have bypassed theaters and gone straight to Netflix.

Trivia:

Bruce Wilkinson (the writer) first met Director Martin Guigui in Austin, Texas at the Austin Film Featival back in 2005 at a screening of Guigui's Swing. Little did they know they would find themselves filming "Beneath The Darkness" 5 years later right in the Austin area.