Super Dark Times

[Kevin] Phillips kind of stumbles when he tries for a pat wrap-up of a still-horrific problem. But when he digs into the muck of the rot at the heart of it, he comes up with some unforgettable moments.

A genre film that has things to say about the world in which we live, its emptiness and the chasm between cause and effect.

For a first-time director, [Kevin] Phillips has an unusually strong handle on the finer arts of setting a mood and evoking time and place.

What makes "Super Dark Times" one of the most exciting American filmmaking debuts in recent years is how well Phillips and company grasp both the intensity and ephemerality of adolescence.

Super Dark Times perfectly nails the minute details of adolescence-a minefield of confusion about right and wrong that leads to all kinds of impulsive bad decisions.

Unfortunately the story is such an indie-cinema chestnut that its familiarity tends to overshadow Phillips's careful cultural notation, and the movie drifts further into mystery convention as it goes along.

Phillips has crafted one helluva directorial debut with Super Dark Times, an experience laced with palpable tension akin to a boiling kettle that's ready to blow at any given moment, and I highly recommend that genre fans seek this one out.

... there is a refreshing candor to this film that's wonderful.

It's a film that remembers how awful it can be to grow up, and that even those who survive it usually don't get out without taking a few scars.

Though the final sequence of events is oddly paced and difficult to follow, [Kevin] Phillips succeeds by using the language and logic of teenagers to tell this story.

Super Dark Times is an unsettling, technically accomplished entry into the recent boom of genre pictures examining losses of innocence through their own unique lenses.

There are shades of not only Stephen King in Super Dark Times, but also Spielberg, River's Edge and Donnie Darko. Phillips filters his material through a disarming aesthetic.