In a small fictional Essex village, a mysterious woman arrives seeking answers to her sister’s death. The powerful local business behind the mystery is somewhat unsettled by this and sets about trying to have her killed as well. Daggers Inn could have been good. It isn’t.
Spooky, routine horror films will always be a gateway for aspiring filmmakers with grand ideas and shallow pockets, and Daggers Inn follows many familiar traits. If this were a film leaning into its financial and talent shortcomings, we could easily have been in so-bad-it’s-good territory. Instead, we’re in a ‘so-bad-why-isn’t-this-over?’ situation as appalling performances and strange direction lend the film an uneven, almost unwatchable quality. On more than one occasion, characters will have a conversation standing next to each other, rather than facing, which is immensely distracting. And in what one can only presume is supposed to be a shocking murder, a character is killed by being lightly dragged against a tree. Dead. Instantly.
There is also little clarification to what the local business is, does or wants to do – and why set up in a small village? – with the supposedly nefarious characters talking in what the writer must presume are business lingo one-liners, the best of which being “You should take that dried up old vagina of yours and go to work on Stanley over there ‘cos I know you’re fucking him.” Wittily cutting words indeed.
If the filmmakers hope Daggers Inn could evolve into some The Room-like cult phenomenon, they are likely to be disappointed. This is a poorly made, terribly acted film with little to no redeeming features, even in a vague comic sense.
DAGGERS INN is available to buy/rent via Rakuten TV.
