The Darkness

One has to wonder what The Darkness is doing being released just as the summer movie season is kicking off.  If ever there was a movie that deserved to be sentenced to the cinematic dumping grounds of January or Labor Day Weekend, it's this one.  Here is a supernatural thriller that is about as fresh and appealing as five-year-old cheese that's been forced to sit in the desert sun the entire time.  It's a lame collection of the most elementary scares that will be hard pressed to get the slightest rise out of even the most timid of audience members.

Like a lot of recent haunted house movies, things kick off by introducing us to a seemingly happy family who have a lot of dark secrets.  Meet the Taylors.  Father Peter (Kevin Bacon) is a workaholic architect, with a past of infidelity.  Mom Bronny (Radha Mitchell) is a stressed out stay at home mom trying to take care of their kids, and has a past built around alcoholism.  As for the kids, teenage daughter Stephanie (Lucy Fry) is anorexic, while youngest son Michael (David Mazouz) is autistic and closed off from the world.  While vacationing in the Grand Canyon, Michael falls down a hidden hole into an underground cave while he is briefly unsupervised.  There, he discovers five stones from an ancient Native American tribe that we eventually learn have some connection to evil demons from another realm.  The kid brings the stones home with him, and before too long, he is talking to an invisible friend he calls "Jenny", and seems to live in the walls.  Not long after that, the usual paranormal shenanigans associated with these kind of movies start up around the house.  Water faucets and TVs are turning on by themselves, local animals such as the neighbor's dog and a friendly cat start acting strangely and violently around the family, footsteps can be heard in the attic, and dirty hand prints start appearing all over the walls and bed sheets.

Thanks to a few convenient and oddly specific Internet searches, Bronny figures out the connection between the paranormal happenings and this ancient tribe that once lived in the Grand Canyon area.  Peter, however, is less inclined to believe her, especially when he starts finding liquor bottles hidden about the house.  Not that Peter really has much reason to doubt her.  He's witnessed plenty of odd happenings all over the house, but it's not until the movie is about 90% over that he finally decides to pack up the family, stay in a hotel, and call a spiritual expert to examine the house.  You would think the large black vortex that suddenly appears on Michael's wall after the kid starts a fire in his room would kind of tip him off.  He thinks the vortex is just a burn mark that can be painted over, and doesn't even seem to notice that it is frequently bubbling with black ooze, and sometimes has inky arms and hands reaching out of it.  I know that the character of Peter is intended to be a father who is distant from his family, but the screenplay pushes him beyond the point of credibility, and goes into all-out cluelessness.

The Darkness was directed and co-written by Greg McLean, who is best known for making the hyper-violent Wolf Creek horror films.  Here, he seems to have lost all source of inspiration, and instead delivers a haunted house movie that is completely and depressingly by the numbers.  There is no sense of joy behind this movie, like a great horror movie can hold.  Nobody seems to have wanted to make this movie, and so it just rolls out in the most perfunctory manner possible.  Not only can the scares be telegraphed from a mile away by any viewer who is half-awake, they are not even original, with many being lifted wholesale from other horror films.  The movie most shamelessly rips off the Poltergeist films, but I'm sure savvy horror fans could pick out over a dozen other sources of "inspiration".  There is no life to the movie, or the performances within it.  Not only that, but the editing is severely choppy, with characters and plot points being introduced and then forgotten by the next scene.  The entire film has the grim tone of a doomed project that was heavily edited beyond recognition in order to attempt to save it.

The only thing that stood out to me was Kevin Bacon, and it's not because of his performance.  He looks sickly here.  His skin is extremely pale, and he looks eerily thin, as if we can see his skin hanging off of his bones.  It was distracting looking at him.  I'm not the type to criticize an actor on their appearance, but I just couldn't help but notice it every time he was on camera.  He looks downright gaunt in this movie.  I wish I could say he at least gives an interesting portrayal, but he seems lost.  Bacon has done well with paranormal horror before, most notably 1999's criminally underrated Stir of Echoes.  But this script gives him nothing to work with, so all I could do was notice how strangely unhealthy he looked up there on the screen.

This movie is a total lost cause on just about every level.  It's not thrilling, holds no new or interesting ideas, and has been made without the slightest trace of imagination.  It's a total dead zone, free of entertainment value and purpose.  When you get right down to it, sitting in the dark for 90 minutes would be more fulfilling than watching The Darkness.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments