Upon learning of a mysterious unfinished manuscript from legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway, 3 friends decide to make a trip to Havana, Cuba. However, their investigations eventually lead them to a derelict building within the city, but their intuitive behaviour results in them being trapped in said derelict house where they become part of a deadly game which they have little chance of winning...
Considering the genre and the rather basic way the film plays out in the second half Havana Darkness has a very odd kind of pretentiousness about it which doesn't really sit well within the genre. More than half of the film is spent on one of the protagonists convincing the others of the sinister goings on at said derelict building and in trying to convince them that Ernest Hemingway was on to something with this house. Aside from the stupid idea that a group of protagonists would choose to venture inside a place with such a chequered history one also wonders why all of this filler was necessary to set the story up? I mean why not just have the group stumble across the house accidentally and decide to investigate - perhaps after hearing strange sounds or such like? Yes it still would have been flawed, but you still would have lost 45 minutes of filler and would have got to the meat of the film much quicker.
Ultimately when it does eventually get going it does become a cross between The Collector and Saw, but sadly the quality of this film is closer to the later Saw films more than anything else. The Collector had some problems, but it was intense and nail-bitingly tense (despite having a thin plot). The early Saw films benefitted from strong plots and imaginative traps making them the granddaddy of this kind of genre. By contrast, Havana Darkness shares none of these qualities; there is no tension - despite the killers having weapons they are totally inept and are the sort of people that would fail in their attempts to rob a 90 year old lady. The traps (all 2 of them I think) were not all that clever and the ending was also rather silly leaving the film open to a sequel.
Havana Darkness has no tension, no intensity, no suspense and a weird kind of pretentiousness in the first half that feels completely unconnected to the second half of the picture. If you want to see this sort of thing done right then watch The Collector/The Collection or any of the Saw films (heck only some of the very late Saw films give Havana Darkness a run for its money in terms of crappiness).
