Black hole darkness a result of gravity or temporal distortion? Please correct me if I am wrong as I may have made some incorrect assumptions.

Okay so we know that at some stage of "nearness to a black hole", light is no longer reflected back at us from the black hole itself. Some scientists have proposed the speed of light and it's relationship to relativity is natures way of adjusting the rate at which time passes seemingly to disallow "weirdness that could result" .. for example the fast moving object would become more massive.

We also know that the mass of the black hole causes a nearby observer to behave as if he/she were moving at incredible speeds and subsequently slows time for the observer "relatively speaking of course". 

I realize that from the perspective of the observer light is traveling to and away from him/her at it's normal rate even though effectively the observer is traveling very fast. Imagine however what would happen to the frequency of the light. The red/blue shift would undoubtedly be obscene.

Since we here on earth are "relatively speaking" experiencing time passing at our normal "earth rate". I can't help but imagine that immense gravity near a black hole is distorting time and its darkness is a result of either extreme red/blue shift or the light is somehow phased or altered by the temporal distortion. Yes gravity is the origin of the darkness but is the direct cause or an indirect relationship where the rate of time passing is the culprit?
As an object falls towards a black hole, light emitted by the object will become red-shifted by the gravity. As photons rise out of the gravity well of the black hole they lose energy, they can't slow down but their wavelength is stretched. The object will go dark as it approaches the event horizon due to gravitational redshifting. 

Photons starting from the event horizon would be redshifted to zero energy, and no photons can travel from inside the event horizon.

We also will observe gravitational time dilation, the last second before the object reaches the event horizon will be stretched out indefinitely. The two effects are all part of the same relativistic theory of gravity. You can't unpick the two effects.