I love Lordi. Lordi, along with Manowar, was one of my esoteric gateway drugs to metal fandom. Of course, this may have been because Nashville, from what I’ve heard, has a sort of country-western protectionist policy toward radio play. I naturally checked out their horror movie, which unfortunately is as blandly antiseptic as the hospital it takes place in. It was also one of Finlands highest-budget film at the time (equivalent to $4,300,000), so make your own judgment on that.
The movie revolves around an autistic girl (Skye Bennett) in a hospital whose visions compel her to draw an infernal spiral with a red crayon. After a bad experience, her father Ben (Noah Huntley) tries to get her out of the hospital, but they and the rest of the gang (William Hope, Leon Herbert, Ronald Pickup, Philip Bretherton, Dominique McElligott) run into to trouble because the hospital is haunted by members of Lordi! (Mr. Lordi, Amen, Awa, Kita, and OX). People die as they encounter each member one by one until the girl glows in radiant goodness as she faces the final boss (Mr. Lordi). She basically tells him off as he stands their growling in digital smoke and the curse is lifted. The film ends with the girl’s drawing a spiral this time with a blue crayon, which is presumably better.
Dark Floors is neither good enough to be engaging nor cheesy enough to be amusing in a way that can compete with the director's name. As a horror movie, it has little originality or punch, and its style is generic. A product of the Naughts, it lacks good retro B-Movie style, and it has the inevitable poorly-integrated CGI. Whatever potential it could have to be taken seriously is squandered by the monsters’ being cameos of Lordi members, so they might as well by Looney Tunes characters. It might have been fun had they leaned into a camp comedy approach, but that would be intruding into GWAR’s territory. It doesn't even feature any songs.
It seems almost appropriate that Lordi’s horror movie isnn’t nearly as fun as Alice Cooper's, considering he dissed on them once, though I think that’s because he read something they said wrong. Then agin, he is Alice Cooper so he can say things like that.
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