You always like to see people enjoying their work. Especially actors who with a good director have to channel their emotions properly so as to get the most effective amount of emotion and the right emotion per scene as the dialog dictates.

But all players love to have at least one role in which they can just let it all hang out. Such a film came to Dennis Quaid with Beneath The Darkness where the respected mortician of this small Texas town has an interesting sideline with some of the bodies he has. Those that he's personally made dead.

Quaid was a small town football player in Texas and that guarantees you respectability right away in that state. But four teens, Tony Oller, Aimee Teagarden, Devon Workhiser, and Stephen Ford discover his past time. One of them dies for it. Still they're the ones in the jackpot.

I usually give these films short shrift. But I always maintain that these slasher films are great because overacting is a requirement and players just have a ball with these parts.

Dennis really lets it rip in Beneath The Darkness. Fans of his should love it.

In Smithville, Texas, the teenagers Brian (Stephen Lunsford),Abby (Aimee Teegarden),Travis (Tony Oller) and Danny (Devon Werkheiser) are classmates of the Smithville High School and best friends. One day, they are reading Macbeth for a class and they decide to investigate the rumors that the house of the mortician Ely Vaughn (Dennis Quaid) is haunted by ghosts. They see shadows in the upper window and they break in the house to see what is happening and they see a corpse lying on the bed; however, they are surprised by Ely that kills Danny, pushing him to fall off the staircase. Nobody believes in the teenagers since Ely is a respectable citizen, but Travis and Abby decide to prove that the undertaker is a psychopath. Will they be successful in their intent?

"Beneath the Darkness" is a totally forgettable and absurd movie full of clichés about a deranged man that lives with the corpse of his dead wife Rosemary. Four teenagers investigating ghosts in the Twentieth-First Century is a lame premise for the story. Dennis Quaid is not a bad actor, but he is awfully ham with grimaces. However Stephen Lunsford and Aimee Teegarden have good performances and show great chemistry. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Além da Escuridão" ("Beyond the Darkness")

My biggest disappointment is that the by-line reveals too much about the film. I will assume you have read it. The opening scene of Quaid burying alive his wife's lover was decent. It moves to a classroom scene where the discussion is about both Poe and Macbeth...nice tie-in.

Travis (Tony Oller) plays the moody teen lead who laments over his dead sister, and sometimes sees ghosts which he confides in cheerleader Abby (Aimee Teegarden). One night some of the teens, thinking Quaid isn't home, enter his mortician residence ghost hunting, only to find he is at home and has an unhealthy relationship with his dead, embalmed, not exactly buried wife.

The movie starts out like it is going to be a barn burner, then it slows and dies.

Parental Guides: infrequent F-bomb, no sex or nudity.