What trash has bleached my eyes? The acting is horrendous. I mean, what a pile of nonsense. People clearly get off making these sorts of films, and just think its a whizzy joke. No doubt that some will be amused, but that is just a faze honey - you'll be bored by this one. The photography, the acting, the dialogue... its all just trashy and lacks in any sense of the word 'art'.

Unappealing cast - not only how they look, but who their characters are, and what they do. Terrible camera work, neutering whatever was meant to be erotic, or at least titillating. Less nudity, story and production value than in any of the late-night soft-core flicks on Cinemax or Showtime. Or one of those pulp "photography" magazines that provided cheap thrills before Hef delivered Playboy unto us.

"Darker Shades of Elise" is really a pornographic film dressed up as a melodrama. There is certainly something entertaining about watching Elise (played by Becca Hirani) cheat on her boring husband Rick (Tommy Viles) and explore her sexual fantasies with Felix (Arron Blake). Yet there is not one relationship in this movie that is genuine and heartfelt and, therefore, this movie cannot be considered a great erotic film which stretches the boundaries. Instead, this film only has some level of achievement of being a guilty pleasure by showing a few scenes with Becca Hirani taking her clothes off and having sex with different men.

If they were smart, the filmmakers would have realized that their movie could not be anything more than a pornographic flick. Unfortunately, they were not smart at all and made the fatal mistake of adding a whole layer of violence to a film that could have worked fine as a guilty pleasure. I do not always bash movies for their violence, but I do on this occasion for two reasons. First, the film appears to be suggesting that a woman who engages in extramarital affairs deserves to be blackmailed, raped, and subjected to other horrific acts of violence. Such a message is just plain sexist and has no redeeming value whatsoever. Second, the violence comes across as a cynical attempt to make what is frankly a trashy sex film appear serious and important. On that basis, most porn films are far better than "Darker Shades" because at least they acknowledge what they are and do not try to spoil the nudity and gratuitous sex with excessive violence at the end.