Cheap porno.

There are a lot of movies here at How About Notflix that I jokingly refer to as being shot like a cheap softcore porno. The kind you’d see on Cinemax back in the 80s and 90s where it was basically a game of hide the penis and vagina and people didn’t have sex but just humped each other for a few seconds. Darker Shades of Summer was a cheap softcore porno, and I’m kinda surprise that Tubi hosted it. Actually I’m not that shocked. On third thought, I’m kinda shocked.

Directed by Ntiarna Xavier Knight who you may know as the Go Karter in Drake’s music video Nice For What, Darker Shades of Summer has everything I could want out of a Tubi movie. Zero reviews on IMDB, even from users? Check. No Wikipedia? Double check. No trailer on the internet? Oh my god it’s the trifecta. This is probably the first movie that I have to pull stills directly from Tubi because there are no trailers and the IMDB has no photos available. God damn. Thankfully Tubi doesn’t have DRM to block recording software.

Speaking of which.

The movie stars Danielle Scott as Summer Brookes, a woman who finds herself at an impasse in life. She wants her husband Dylan (Stephen Staley) to unclog her drains, if you catch my drift, and she’s willing to walk around in lacy underwear and show off her lady bits to convince him to take her to pound town. Again, if you catch my drift. She wants a full English breakfast with extra blood sausage and a large hard whisk to scramble her lady bussy. Did I mention this movie is English? That’s going to be an important factor going forward. Anyway, Dylan is a hardworking lawyer I’m pretty sure, and he’s so stressed out from work that his penis is flaccid.

Listen this whole review can’t be just sex metaphors.

Summer has an epiphany when she accidentally walks in on her friend Steph (May Kelly) getting plowed and it awakens that she really enjoys watching other people have sex. She convinces Dylan to take a retreat to this place where swingers meet to make sex, and by make sex I mean have the most unenthusiastic sex possible. Remember the very bored handjob scene at the start of Breaking Bad? It’s basically the only episode I’ve seen of that show. It’s like that.

Imagine if that was supposed to be an alluring sex scene and the actors were trying to show how much they enjoyed it. There are multiple sex scenes in this film complete with more boobs and butts than you can shake a stick at, and they make sex look incredibly boring and emotionless. Like it’s a chore. I’m not asking the actors to go over the top like an episode of Bang Bus, but at least pretend like the check is decent. Give me something to work with.

I learned a few things from watching this movie. One, I don’t know how British people procreate. I’m excluding the Irish and the Scottish since those accents sound heavenly on the right person and I’m also aware there are many British accents, but the London-ish accents on these actors? After hearing these characters trying to talk dirty to one another, I think I’m impotent. My peepee don’t work. I’m going to have to fall asleep to my Idris Elba ASMR tapes to rid my body of this poison.

This film is full of flat shots, dull lighting, and boring atmosphere. There’s very little soundtrack during scenes and the quiet doesn’t add much to the mood. A few of the characters have chemistry, incidentally the same ones who have been starring in the same d-grade schlock for the last ten years, and ultimately the ongoing story isn’t really worth the hour and a half this movie runs. You can tell that the director is a short film creator, as Knight’s previous two director roles are for short films. This is roughly a 20 minute movie with 70 minutes of really stupid filler.

I’d say the actors are just jacking off but the actors are literally just jacking off a lot of the time. Maybe it’s because I’m not gay but there’s nothing really enjoyable about watching Stephen Staley emotionlessly pretend to choke his chicken just out of view of the camera.

Also Ntiarna Xavier Knight is a genius tier beginner director. She clearly understands Chekov’s Gun because the movie has a set-up in the beginning that I spent the whole runtime wondering when it would pay off, and you know what? It did. In a satisfying way no less. I’m actually concerned they murdered one of the actors because his dead body looked almost uncomfortably realistic. Instantly brought this film up a full point in my view.

Is it worth watching? No. That being said I am looking forward to Ntiarna’s next film.

Rating: C-