Michelle (Kaylee DeFer) is a somewhat petulant, tortured soul. She is pretty blonde, and in possession of a throaty, scratchy voice guaranteed to dissipate into an airy rasp should she be moved to scream in horror - and she has plenty of reason to here.

Told in sometimes confusing flashbacks, Michelle has been institutionalised because she caused an accident which killed three of her friends whilst under the influence of alcohol. She's not particularly remorseful, showing scant regard for any rules or regulations at the rehab facility. Daniel (Tobias Segal), who seems well-meaning, and Rachel (Elisabeth Rohm), who is in authority, are revealed as having their own dark secrets, a revelation that attempts to vindicate Michelle's earlier lack of respect for them - even though she cannot possibly have known of their out-of-hours activities.

They are religious extremists, steering their faith towards 'purging' inmates of their sins by torturing them at a secret location. And there you have the plot. We spend the rest of the time watching Michelle try to escape their clutches.

The low budget on display works in the film's favour, with non-slick locations revelling in their enclosed dinginess and grainy imagery. We are expected to side with Michelle but given scant reason to, other than the fact that the other characters are more misguided than she is. It is unspectacular but solid, with good performances and a good atmosphere of hopelessness. It isn't quite 'torture porn', but there are some nasty inferences all explained by a familiar perversion and the easy target of religious abuse. There are some nice moments of melancholy - flashbacks of innocent children playing contrasting well with the sporadic bouts of violence - but where 'Darkroom' falls down is that it isn't terribly involving due to the unsympathetic, sketchy characters.

This review contains spoiler, please do not read it before watching the movie.

Darkroom is about a girl, who caused a car accident DUI that kills 3 of her friends traveling with her. Later, she gets into a rehabilitation center (probably after jail-time, it doesn't mentioned, only that she couldn't continue school afterwards). When she gets out, she takes on a job with the help of her counselor. Though, the job turns out to be a nightmare in which 3 crazy siblings with troubled background torture and kill 'sinner' girls.

The movie applies a very interesting multiple-timeline structure so we can figure out what's going on. The plot is decent. The leading actress was even a familiar face from Gossip Girl. Yet, the whole thing made me feel only indifference and I can't really tell why. Maybe, because the protagonist girls was so terribly unlikeable. Or because the things happening were either too random or too forced. Maybe because the story just failed to become a whole. Maybe because too much misfortune was tried to be pushed into a single story (a foster girls kills friends, ends up with a psycho counselor, who happens to have 2 psycho brothers, one of whom has other mental problems too, and the cherry on top is that their psycho mother managed to raise all 3 of them equally psycho.) OK, now that I wrote this last part, I think this is it. It's like Remember Me. Overwhelmingly too much. That, and the fact that I just couldn't care for the girl. A pity, I guess.

Something about this movie just kept missing the mark, leaving me unsatisfied and and very Meh!

The acting is actually really good but not enough to save the film. In some parts of the films its a poor mans Hostel but not in a good way.

The stupidest part of the movie involves the revealing of the backstory of the baddies OMG, of course you would have those details just lying around WTF!

The ending is simply horrible, I was going to give this a 4 (largely due to the acting) however ending just sucks.

I can't think of a good reason why you would watch this unless you are related to someone in the movie?