Darkness (2004)

:SPOILER: Lights Don't Work When Things Get Scary, But Carlos Is there...Usually When I'm Looking Around A New House And I Find A Giant Snake Emblem Under My Hardwood Floors, I Just Kinda Keep It To Myself Also..List Of Clichés: SPOILERS:Old Music, Flickering Lights, Poor Lighting To Hide Faces, The Knowledge Guy Whom For Some Reason Can't Tell The Characters EVERYThing, But Just Enough To Scare The BeJesus Out Of Them, Moving Objects, Parents Disbelief, Moving INto A New home. This Might Be The Worse Movie Mother Of All Time..Saying Freaking Instead of F***in Makes You Just As Lame As The Situation.. The PG13 Level Boobs Bouncing IN The Same halterTop All Movie is Terrible The Darkness Constantly Is Terrible The Mother is Unbelievably Stupid The Music Had Nothing To Do With The Movie The Boyfriend Was Stupid As Hell Her Willingness To Discover Things On Her Own Were Stupid The Father Going Crazy Was Like "OOOOOK" No Connection With Anyone In The Movie All Characters Were ClownsAnd Then Of Course Pour In The WhysWhy Did The Grandfather Kidnap Her Tell Her The Story Then Let Her Go? Why Didn't She Scream before He Tied Her Mouth? Why Did The Boyfriend Walk In So Unknowingly After He Found Out The Grandfather Knew Something? Why Didn't The Mother See The Snake Emblem?

Boy-oh-boy, I'm tellin' ya, this "uncensored" version of Darkness was certainly mighty tame by today's super-gruesome standards of horrific horror films.And, not only was its gore-level almost at the point of being anemic (which was truly unforgivable) - But, the effect of its overall scare-factor never once came close to scoring a frighteningly legitimate bull's-eye. Never.At times I thought that Darkness was, indeed, coming close to hitting its intended mark, but, then, it inexplicably held back at that crucial point of achieving its desired goal. And, so, Darkness failed to satisfactorily deliver the horrific goods.And, on top of that major disappointment, this film's story about a happy-go-lucky family who move into a house that holds within its walls an unspeakably terrifying secret, covered no new ground, whatsoever.Yep. You can bet that we've all certainly seen, in one way or another, this one's all too familiar and predictably prepackaged story umpteen bloody times.Mind you, Darkness did manage (at times) to create an atmosphere of tension-filled dread that actually held my attention to some degree.But, its mounting suspense that led up to its final, climatic "twist" lost tons of steam when a minor key-character in the story was put in the unfavorable position of having to explain (at verbatim) everything covering a long, 40-year stretch of time. This explanation conveniently tied up all of the loose ends (leading up to this frenzied moment) and even threw a solar eclipse into the mix, for good measure.Anyways - I figure that a lot of this film's significant downfalls can be attributed to its rating of being suitable for those viewers 14 years and older.So, with that in mind, any out-and-out horror, and gore, is certainly going to be carefully held in check so as not to totally gross-out, or corrupt, those dear, impressionable, prepubescent minds of the younger generation.

This review contains spoiler, please do not read it before watching the movie.To put my opinion in a nutshell: Darkness was a huge disappointment for me mainly because its creator is much more capable than this proved by the fact that later he wrote and directed Rec and Rec 2.The movie is really weak both in terms of characters and storyline. Firstly we see a recap of an old crime (there are many old newspaper extracts about it, all in English, seems a bit unlikely for me) when seven kids were kidnapped and six got killed as well in an old house. 40 years later a family is moving to Spain (not really clear why) into an old house (you would never guess which one) where strange things start to happen. The family members are all featureless, indifferent, nothing like actual people. They hardly ever do that anyone in real life would do. As for the story, it is very predictable, almost boring. Well, dad goes crazy, finds some scary symbol under the floor. His daughter (Anna Paquin, who was unexpectedly a disappointment too) and his Spanish friend find the symbol on the internet at once (naturally) and casually there is a very old book with the same symbol on its cover available in the local library (btw I don't think that you can touch any book that the librarian carries around in rubber gloves). The book is about a ritual to awake the darkness. This is the point where you can easily find out from the description of this ritual what happened in the past and who is the next target and what will happen to this person, and it will just miraculously really happen that way.In conclusion, the story is quite boring, easy to find out and the whole thing just doesn't make much sense. As for the characters... well, I just couldn't care whatever happens to them. So I think you won't lose anything by skipping this movie.

There are times while watching this that it reminds me of a Spanish take on Hellraiser, or something with a similar feel. It has atmosphere to burn and decent performances. It probably got buried upon release under a number of similar feeling films, but this one stood above. The threat is kept vague through most of it, and there are some great moments that really put you on the edge of your seat. Specifically the running from the lights as they go off and cast the tunnel into darkness. This technique has been used since in movies such as Vanishing on 7th Street and a dream sequence in The Descent, but it was done best here. Check this out, you should enjoy it.