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Don't Look in the Dark Review: Black Screen Hell | Streamin’ Demons
13 Plays26 days ago
Jo & Amelie suffer through Don't Look in the Dark (2025/26?), a 71-minute found-footage disaster of endless black screens, shaky phones, and zero payoff. We bailed—first time ever. If you want to know how bad a horror movie can really get, this is your warning. Streamin’ Demons Season 5 begins with rage.
Check out all our links → https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell
Key Moments
- Opening chaos – Jo tries to figure out what holiday it even is while Amelie shows the infamous black camera
- We bailed – Historic first: Jo & Amelie stop the movie mid-way because it’s unwatchable
- Motion sickness warning – Amelie describes the never-ending shaky phone footage that makes viewers want to vomit
- Colorblind whining – Jo loses it over the male lead’s endless colorblind complaints with no payoff
- Reality check – Both agree even a phone-recorded jungle trip in Malaysia looks 100× better than this
- Positive spin – If you’re thinking of making a movie, watch this first so you know you can do way better
- Mail call & teaser – Jo shows off the signed Dogma 25th Blu-ray + quick hype for the upcoming Dogma sequel
Amazon Affiliates noteWe are Amazon Affiliates. If we mention or link to any product (like the Dogma Blu-ray) and you click through and purchase, we do receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
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Transcript
Introduction to Streaming Demon Season 5
00:00:07
Jo
Happy birthday. No. Merry Christmas. No. Happy New Happy New Year's. That's right. This is the first one recording the New Year's. Not the first one you'll hear. Lottie, dotty, dotty, dotty. Welcome back to Streaming Demon Season 5. Officially Season 5 today with myself, Joe, and my co-host Amelie. Say hello.
00:00:26
Jo
I'll translate in the French. She said, yo. Today's going to be a short one.
Discussion on 'Don't Look in the Dark'
00:00:33
Jo
Honestly, we're not going to lie. We got Don't Look in the Dark. 2026, five, something like that. Yeah. And Amelie, for those who were on podcast land listening, Amelie just showed a camera off.
00:00:45
Jo
Those who are watching, that's all we saw for about 90% the movie, a black screen. So we'll get that in a second. So the storyline is a couple phone, excuse me, a couple's phones, or a couple phones, secretly recorded their camping trip in Pineland's National Reserve in April 4th, 2022, capturing fragmented audio slash video of what happened.
00:01:07
Jo
The blackouts remain as it found in the footage. The tagline is, is it a movie? No, it's not. Oh, wait, there's more. Is it a movie or something more? It's still not anything else.
00:01:20
Jo
So today for you who are watching streaming demons, ah I'm always doing it for the purpose. If you're listening, you have no clue what's going on around. This one is with Dennis Puglisi as Golan.
00:01:34
Jo
Rebi Pajanini as Maya, written, directed by Stan Freeman. And honestly, I don't know if there's writer at this thing at all. It is all of an hour and 11 minutes.
00:01:47
Jo
And... Let's just say, Amelie, what did you think?
00:01:53
Amelie
I think we could have done a better movie just with the podcast. And I'm... What you're going to see, ladies and gentlemen, with my black camera, it's exactly what we see.
00:02:12
Amelie
And I'm not joking. This is not a joke. So basically, the story, it's a man and a woman... They're walking in a forest.
00:02:25
Amelie
And the camera is just going in every sense.
00:02:29
Amelie
Like when I say it's every sense.
00:02:29
Jo
Right.
00:02:33
Jo
For those of you watching, ready to throw up.
00:02:33
Amelie
This is a movie, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not fucking with you. This is a movie. what We're going to do the podcast like that. So hello, my name is Amelia. I watched a movie. It was an interesting movie about two people going in the forest.
00:02:50
Amelie
And you can hear about them. They're a sort of couple. They follow a trail. And she's really good at following trails. He's colorblind. He doesn't know. It's the first time he goes. It's a sort of date or weekend away. She saw a kid.
00:03:07
Amelie
She saw a kid somewhere, apparently. And it's from a vision of a mobile phone.
00:03:14
Jo
Yeah.
00:03:18
Amelie
But really, like it's a version of a mobile phone. And at the beginning, we thought there were problems with our internet connection. And yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:31
Amelie
Like, you don't see their face, you see the tree, you see things, right? And it's moving all the time. and sometimes you have minutes like this with dialogue.
00:03:45
Jo
Yeah, just minutes of black screen. Minutes of it. Just black screen.
00:03:51
Amelie
Yeah, definitely.
00:03:52
Jo
There is allegedly a child in this movie because they're credited in the cast.
00:03:53
Amelie
And they have conversations. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:03:59
Jo
But honestly, God, I didn't see any kid. You know why? Maybe the kid appears. Maybe not. I
Criticism of Movie Execution and PR
00:04:05
Jo
can't tell you because we turned this piece of shit off. We turned it off.
00:04:10
Jo
it was like, oh, I don't want to waste any more of my fucking time.
00:04:10
Amelie
Mm-hmm.
00:04:14
Jo
And i I remember we were watching it. I texted you like, hey, you want to bail on this movie, which we have never done before. You and I have never bailed. No matter how fucking bad the movie was, we never bailed on a movie. And we had some shit burgers last year.
00:04:31
Jo
Some great ones.
00:04:32
Amelie
It was really bad. it was really bad.
00:04:34
Jo
Yeah.
00:04:35
Amelie
It was so bad. We stopped the movie. We tried to zap the movie to see if they were a normal scene because I thought it was maybe 10 minutes of the movie with the point of view on my phone. And it was always going on black.
00:04:52
Amelie
And I thought it was a program who had a problem.
00:04:52
Jo
Yeah.
00:04:54
Amelie
And I haven't texted you saying, I feel like I've got to a problem with my internet. I'm going to restart the movie. And you say, no no no no no, no, no, it's black.
00:05:01
Jo
Yeah.
00:05:03
Amelie
So if you cannot watch our podcast right now with my black screen and me doing this with a camera, don't watch the movie.
00:05:11
Jo
And we apologize this right now for anyone's emotional sickness and I'm getting about to fucking throw up at this point. But yeah, we get it. it's It's not...
00:05:20
Jo
The sound is shit. The video is shit. Honestly, don't God don't know if they actually recorded on two cell phones and that was it or if they kind of edited. My hope in art land is they filmed this professionally and then edited it to make it look like shit.
00:05:36
Jo
But I'm guessing they just were shit. I'm so sorry. I get I don't like, I guess, 2026 is where Joe comes back and starts calling movies shit. But here we are.
00:05:47
Jo
If this was the theater, I would want my money back. I would sat down for 10 minutes tops and go, fuck this.
00:05:53
Amelie
it's bad it's bad it's bad like we had to stop right have a conversation and said this is really bad even my partner he was sitting next to me doing his stuff and he's like i mean it's been the 20 times to say it's bad if it's bad stop the movie and i'm like no but it's really bad like it's really bad ah can't say oh it's a new movie it's a low-cost movie you know what i mean like no c'est nul c'est vraiment nul ah
00:06:16
Jo
Is
00:06:26
Jo
that going be fucking movie?
00:06:28
Amelie
non mais i went to malaysia in the jungle with a calm stick on my bag i can show you you can see me moving you see what i mean but you see people faces people turning to me uh you can see monkey etc you know what's going on right like no no no yeah sure for five minutes you can have people for example walking around with a camera it
00:06:47
Jo
Yeah.
00:06:59
Amelie
no sipa no no doesn't make it
00:07:03
Amelie
I don't understand.
00:07:03
Jo
No, I agree.
00:07:05
Jo
i it got so bad, i started to look at the movie up online and God help that PR team right now. But They are posting on Reddit forums like the blar Blair Rich Project. It is not the fucking Blair Rich Project.
00:07:18
Jo
It is not. The most brilliant thing this team ever did was give me a sense that the movie might have been good enough to watch. And I asked for the screener. I fucking asked for this.
00:07:30
Jo
You know, I did not know. Based upon what I saw, I'm like, oh, this looks interesting as fuck. No, the PR is interesting as fuck. The movie is not. The movie writing, the dialogue is shit.
00:07:41
Jo
Honest to God. ah If I hear the guy is colorblind one more goddamn time, I'm blow his fucking brains out. You can tell me what fucking color those are then. It's just shit. He's just a whiny little bitch the entire time.
00:07:52
Jo
And I don't know if it's like written or just an ad lib, but it grates on you. It grates on you. And grates on you. And not in a good way.
00:08:03
Jo
Not like, oh, there's a payoff. There's no fucking payoff. The payoff is you go down go like, shit, I can take this for my 10 more minutes. And you look at the time left in movie, I'm like, oh, we still have like 50 minutes left?
00:08:15
Jo
Fuck this. I was looking at credit card offers instead of watching this fucking film. So 10 of those minutes, I actually watched the film, struggled through it.
00:08:26
Jo
The other 10 minutes, I was Googling fucking shit about my new credit card offer I got from Chase. That was it. like, oh, it was really 0% with 300 back.
00:08:37
Jo
That was all. That was it. so I'm sorry.
Debate on Low-Budget Film Execution
00:08:41
Jo
if this You would never see this in a theater, right? I'm assuming.
00:08:46
Jo
No, she's saying no.
00:08:46
Amelie
No, no, no, no, no. Like, you know, when you say to me, hey, would you like to participate to podcast with me, watch movies, B-movie, Locos movie, etc.
00:08:59
Amelie
I say great, amazing. Let's see. And we always have something positive to say, even and if we don't like the movie, or even even if we were like, oh, look, that movie, I wouldn't watch it in theater, but at least on TV, or I really like the synopsis, or there is one actor who is really good, e etc.
00:09:04
Jo
Yeah.
00:09:11
Jo
We'd like to scene or costuming. Yeah.
00:09:18
Amelie
No, nothing.
00:09:19
Jo
No.
00:09:20
Amelie
like I'm like, what happened? what
00:09:24
Jo
No.
00:09:24
Amelie
I do not understand. If I was doing a movie, low budgets with a group of people with maybe mobile phone camera computer etc etc i would ask people to watch the movie and notice and listen to the critics what happened not anyone say uh excuse me this is really bad don't do that like come on oh
00:09:45
Jo
Yeah.
00:09:50
Jo
Oh, a lot of people are saying that online. There's a lot of people saying that online. Don't do that. It's pretty bad.
00:09:57
Amelie
Ah no, but... Mech, dude, I am negatively gobsmacked. Like...
00:10:07
Jo
I don't know, man. All I know is it wasn't for us. It got to the point where online, they're like, the PR company is, PR people, probably the fucking writers and the director, put out like a black picture. Like, oh you have to look, you know, stare into the black picture. like, no, fuck you, man. you're It's not even a goddamn art film.
00:10:28
Jo
I'm sorry. if If my kid did this, I'd be like, what the fuck's wrong with dude? No one's watching this shit. I don't got kids. But if I add them and they brought to us back this back, this is not going on the goddamn refrigerator for magnets.
00:10:45
Jo
This is going in the trash. Probably in front of the kids so they do better next time. Anyways, but that's that's it for this one. Don't look in the dark. Don't look in the fucking film. Watch it yourself. I don't care.
00:10:56
Jo
It's your hour and 10 minutes or maybe it's just 10 minutes. Who knows? However long you can take that shit for, let us know how it ended because I don't fucking know.
00:11:08
Jo
Maybe it was a great brilliant payoff in the last two seconds. I don't fucking know. I did actually turn off my fucking screen just in case I was supposed to see something in the goddamn dark square.
00:11:19
Jo
The answer was just my disappointment flashing back at me. That was it. So don't look in the dark 2020, whatever the fuck it is, hour 11 minutes.
00:11:31
Amelie
No, won't.
00:11:34
Jo
Skip it. Sorry.
00:11:34
Amelie
But the positive thing is if you want to create a movie, watch it and understand you can do better.
00:11:35
Jo
Yeah.
00:11:40
Jo
You can.
00:11:44
Jo
Yeah, absolutely.
Comparison to Other Films
00:11:45
Amelie
we you can do better.
00:11:45
Jo
It is ah it is positive.
00:11:47
Amelie
Computer, internet, renting some stuff, contacting some university and stuff like that, you can do way better.
00:11:55
Jo
Absolutely. And we're not going to say these people should stop making movies by any stretch of the imagination. It's almost better than Cannibal Holocaust. But put it this Cannibal Holocaust didn't have the animal killing on camera.
00:12:10
Jo
This would be far worse. The only thing I don't really, you know, call them a cannibal holocaust is a bit of a snooze for me other than the horrific killing of the animals on camera for no fucking reason at all. all reality Well, then snuff your fucking the actors too because that's with the reality of it.
00:12:27
Jo
But that's all. Don't look into whatevers. Not going more press.
Upcoming Episodes and Surprises
00:12:31
Jo
But next up on Streaming Demons, we're going to get more films. That's right. More films. Different films. Not just horror. All sorts of films. All that and more. Avengers Doomsday coming out, motherfuckers.
00:12:44
Jo
We're going be there for that one, too. All that and more on next Streaming Demons. That's it. Like, subscribe, or not. Whatever. We just saved you an hour and 15 minutes of your life you're going to watch that film anyways. So you're lucky.
00:12:57
Jo
behalf of myself, Joe, my co-host, Emily, we bid you good day. Welcome to 2026. wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we go. I never even said what I got in the mail. Today, available, available. He's holding up dogma 25th anniversary Blu-ray, Blu-ray. Someone scribbled all over this shit on this front cover.
00:13:16
Jo
Oh, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith scribbled all over the front cover of it. God damn it, you guys. Damn yous. No, thank you, though. For real. And I do know that there's a sequel to Dogma coming out. Motherfuckers. Yeah.
00:13:32
Amelie
sequel oh
00:13:33
Jo
Yep.
00:13:36
Jo
Oh, no, no. You're saying no, no. I'm saying yes, yes.
00:13:38
Amelie
um
00:13:39
Jo
I'm going, yeah, yeah. I can't wait for that fucking sequel to come out. All right, kids. Take laters. Bye.