Directed by James Ford, who also directed Hip Hop Youngstown, and co-written by Art Institute of Pittsburgh graduate Melanie Clarke-Penella, What Happens In the Dark is the story of Trevor Evans (Hakeem Sharif), a real estate businessman who has his fingers in many pies, including the drug game and some of his co-workers, all things unknown to his wife Ava Parker Evans (Adriana Alphonso). She wants to have a baby with him. He’s struggling to stay alive when he borrows too much from the wrong people.

The movie starts with Trevor in a big pine box — I mean, if you’re going to get buried alive, at least this one seems somewhat roomy — and thinking about how he got here. Well, when you take more than you make and think that your street product is always going to be in demand, that may be how. It’d help if he treated anyone well, but Trevor is all for Trevor. When one of his old friends Mook (Demaris Harvey) borrows a ton of money from him and starts ducking him — a fact that Mook’s lady Kiesha (Jayda Jones) calls him out on — he goes into his friend’s bar the Kulture Ultra Lounge (which is a real place in Cleveland Heights, OH) and they struggle over a gun and tragedy happens.

Speaking of Ohio, this is the second Tubi original that I’ve seen shot in Youngstown — the other is The Housekeeper — and it’s so strange to see places where I grew up show up on my Tubi.

As you can imagine, Trevor ruins everyone’s life and is horrible from the start with absolutely nothing redeemable about himself. There’s no hero’s journey, just what happens to a bad person when he meets worse ones. This movie lives up to the line that inspires it: “What’s done in the dark always comes to the light.”

You can watch this on Tubi.