At the centre of this mid-'80s Dutch murder mystery is a rather attractive girl, teenager Valerie Jaspers, played by Maayke Bouten, who looks like a cross between actresses Jennifer Connelly and Brooke Shields (as eye-candy goes, that's a pretty good combination). After Valerie's mother is flattened by a hit and run driver, an autopsy reveals that the woman Valerie had called mum for seventeen years had never actually given birth. Valerie decides to do a little amateur investigative work into her origins but finds herself the next target of her mother's killer.
This being a Dutch film, Valerie takes off her clothes quite a bit, to make love to her boyfriend, take a bath, or just for the heck of it, all of which makes the film just about bearable despite an instantly forgettable plot and very little in the way of tension or scares. Death in the Shadows also features one of the weirdest musical scores to be heard on film—strange accordion playing, random whistling, and repetitive percussion; at times it has a quirky charm, but most of the time it is bloody irritating.
This being a Dutch film, Valerie takes off her clothes quite a bit, to make love to her boyfriend, take a bath, or just for the heck of it, all of which makes the film just about bearable despite an instantly forgettable plot and very little in the way of tension or scares. Death in the Shadows also features one of the weirdest musical scores to be heard on film—strange accordion playing, random whistling, and repetitive percussion; at times it has a quirky charm, but most of the time it is bloody irritating.