The other best worst thing you’ll see all week: Deep Dark

Deep Dark takes a while to get underway. You might not be able to bear its glib low budget take on the angst of its struggling artist. He strings up trash like a mobile and calls it art and hopes to get a gallery showing. We’re in Portland where that kind of thing might happen. Hence this movie. Portland, the Austin of the Pacific Northwest, has it’s own film scene.

But if you give Deep Dark a half hour or so, you’ll find a story about talent, inspiration, and madness that plays out like a low rent Barton Fink, with clumsy gags instead of the Coen Brothers snap and bite. If you give it another half hour or so — if you wait until it really, uh, sinks in — it assumes an identity of its own. It certainly has a unique monster.

Writer/director Michael Medaglia shows admirable restraint and flashes of dark style. He might take too long to get underway, but he knows how to end. Lead actor Sean McGrath gives it his scruffy hangdog all. It’s probably no coincidence McGrath bears a slight resemblance to a young Anthony Hopkins. Say, an Anthony Hopkins about the age he was when he made a movie called Magic, also about talent, inspiration, and madness. Voice actress Denise Poirier brings the monster to life perfectly. And speaking of perfect, Keith Schreiner’s score has the mournful but mischievous quality of Carter Burwell’s best music.

Deep Dark is available for VOD. Support Qt3 and watch it on Amazon.com.