Hey folks, Harry here. Saw this film in Spain and it really is just a pretty awful time. It has moments, and had they cast the family as if they were from the same cultural heritage and background... it might've helped. But every character was from a different background and none of them seemed to care about each other, and as a result all the scares and loud noises in the film... just don't mean anything because, well you don't care about the family. Imagine if in POLTERGEIST, you didn't care or like any of the family... Then make all the creep factor stuff tame. Oh and get rid of the atmosphere... ok, now you have DARKNESS.
Two weeks ago a couple of friends and I saw the Dimension film DARKNESS starring Anna Paquin and Lena Olin. I have been checking on your web site to see if anyone has posted their reviews about it but nothing has popped up. I understand that this movie has already been released in Italy as I saw a full page ad in Variety last week for it breaking $1M American dollars in the BO. In any event, I wanted to throw in my brief review of this flick for your use - please feel free to share it if you would like.
The movie was anything but stellar - the biggest issue I had with it was the fact that it didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it a thriller designed to scare the hell out of the audience or was it a mystery where we had to root for the heroes of the story to solve the mystery? I still don't know what it wanted me to feel, Perhaps after reading this, you will get a better idea...
The movie opens in SPAIN (I still can't figure out the relevance since everyone drove American cars and spoke English) where a family has recently moved into a house with a dark past. The husband, portrayed by Iain Glen, did an amazing job of being a man with a history of anger imbalances. It is clear that they chose this house to escape a family past of anger and manic behavior. The wife, Lena Olin, plays the wife who has clearly been so frightened by the events of their past, that she is incomplete denial of the potential for outbreaks to begin again. We think she is a nurse but we are never sure. The daughter, Anna Paquin, plays the stereotypical hero teenager who is trying to fit in in this new environment (she has a boyfriend who magically comes into the picture - not bad for only being in a country for a 2 week span). The little boy, Played by newcomer Stephen Enquist, play a role similar to one we have already seen in Sixth Sense - he is the first to see that their house is not happy! Finally, we have the husbands' grandfather - played by Giancarlo Giannini (from Hannibal) who is also a doctor and decides that this house is what they need for peace and solitude.
That is the setting - now to THE DARKNESS. The house starts to play with each member of the house - The boy starts drawing pictures of children with the heads cut off - the darkness under his bed starts eating his crayons, the father starts getting a little crazy (think Shining), the mother tries harder and harder to be Snow White - the pressure is building up. Anna's character is trying to protect and understand her little brother - first she sees the pictures and then starts to see bruises on his neck and arms. She brings this up to the mom who thinks that the dad is doing this - mom denies it and the issue is dropped. More and more buildup, darkness appears more in more in each frame of the film, Dad starts to really go crazy, Anna's character sees more bruises on brother and fights with dad. Dad ends up hospitalized only after he decides that that are larva hiding in the walls and he is going to find them. All a part of his mental breakdown! Anna's boyfriend tries to calm her by romancing her and protecting her (BS role) and takes her picture. A scene where Anna is in the house alone after the dad is taken to the hospital while the BF is developing the pictures in his house is good. He sees spirits in the background of the picture as she gets calls from children in the house....
It goes back and forth - sorry, it's too boring to bother with an more details. The end of the story is that is doesn't end happily or badly, it just ends! The good things about this movie is that there was very clever camera angles and sound effects to make the audience nervous - aside of that, this movie seemed to steal from a lot of other films who were more successful in thrilling an audience.
Oh yeah, the plot, well - 50 years prior to the telling of the story, a man was trying to wield the power of the ultimate supernatural DARKNESS - the supreme ruler of evil. In order to do this, it ha to be done during a full eclipse of the sun. He was supposed to kill seven children and have their blood offered as a donation to the Darkness. His was able to kill all of them except one - his son. Surprisingly enough, that son is the dad of this family and the grandfather has set it up once again (there is an eclipse happening that week). He knew that it had to happen in that house (already invaded with evil and darkness) and the father had to die at the right time to have darkness win! Anna and BF try to change the fate of the family, the house, and the story - it all fails in the end. Overall, it was a waste. It had a TON OF HOLES that couldn't be filled without re-writing the whole thing.
If you feel that this makes any sense and would like to share it with others, please call me BONOMAN.
Thanks
PS - Just got invited to see MINDHUNTERS with Christian Slater and Val Kilmer tomorrow night - be on the lookout for my review - I will make sure that it makes a little more sense than this one did. I was trying to recall a bad movie from a few weeks ago - not easy to do!
