I woke from a dream a few weeks ago with this movie on my mind. I haven't thought much about ONE DARK NIGHT in the last 15 years, but I'm glad I did because this is really an overlooked gem.

I know we've all seen the story before: a bunch of sorority girls make a new pledge spend the night in a mausoleum. Of course, the recently deceased don't stay deceased for long and all hell breaks loose.

It's a pretty familiar story line, but the director has taken a lot of care to play up the creep factor without too many of the "fake" scares that can ruin these kinds of movies. The acting is all very good, but the real star of this film is the mausoleum. It's poorly lit, and filmed that way, causing a very atmospheric and paranoid feeling. The buildup is good, if a tad slow, but the ending is really worth it except for one slight problem.

I'm a huge fan of zombie films. Most suck, but there are some really great ones around (see ZOMBIE or DAWN OF THE DEAD if you don't believe me). The problem here is that the dead don't turn into zombies, they don't even come back to life. Instead, what we have is a bunch of dead bodies floating around that are being controlled by the spirit of a dead psychic. I don't know that this really cuts it. It doesn't kill the film, but I'd much rather see the dead come back to life and chomp on the living. Also, the flick is PG, so you can forget about any nudity, graphic violence or bad language. This is probably why the dead are so lame, but that's not to say that their "attack" is without merit, because it's very effective, just not the way I would have filmed it.

Overall, ONE DARK NIGHT is very effective. Aside from my complaints, which are merely personal choices rather than a criticism of the film, the movie is really entertaining. Plus, this is one of a handful of PG-rated horror movies that's actually worth seeing.