The Darkness (2016)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Fresh and Exciting

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Funnily enough I didn't mind it being a bit mimical of Poltergeist, or even The Manitou. The acting was crisp enough, and I like the idea that instead of the wholesome family under siege, this one was dysfunctional, with each one fighting their own demons (rather than the supernatural ones). This movie brimmed with ideas.The problem, I thought, with this movie is its pacing. I thought that the first half of the movie was unnecessarily long and tended to drag out the suspense until there really wasn't any suspense left. This meant that their was little time to get into the heart of the characters and their individual flaws, let alone the medium who appears too much near the end of the film.I felt that whilst this movie borrowed a lot from Poltergeist, it went to too many lengths trying not to be Poltergeist, and as a result the project suffered.A pity really because this movie had all the elements of being a great movie, but squandered it on timing. Elementary mistake.

THE DARKNESS is another hodge podge of tired ideas like many horror films today. The story is about an ordinary family who visit the Grand Canyon. A kid brings some rocks back home, but it turns out they're cursed by a demon which proceeds to follow them and make their family life a misery. Despite the presence of some useful players here this is very much an ordinary production which I found very mundane. There are bits and pieces of THE EXORCIST, POLTERGEIST, INSIDIOUS and plenty of other films visible throughout and yet the film has no distinct voice like any of those other movies. Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell are good value as the parents but they have little to work with here and Bacon's STIR OF ECHOES was much more entertaining. Director Greg McLean previosly made mini-masterworks like ROGUE and WOLF CREEK so it's a shame to see him wasting his time on this; try THE BELKO EXPERIMENT for a much more enjoyable time.

With some talent in the cast, a cool cover, that it did look fairly eerie and that boasted one of the best concepts for any film seen recently by me, 'The Darkness' potential was pretty big. Also appreciate the horror genre and have liked films in similar vein, so watched 'The Darkness' oddly enough with the genuine want and intent to like it. It does pain me to say it, and it is going to sound repetitive being a common thing found in recent viewings and mentioned, but 'The Darkness' managed to be a big disappointment for me and from the sounds of it many others. Big potential, executed in a way that while not terrible rarely rose above mediocrity overall. There are moments and good things, but they were too far and between and not enough for a film that did little with such a good idea. It may annoy people with me saying this a lot recently, but it is hard to not say anything when wastes of good ideas and talent is a bugbear of mine and something that has featured rather too heavily in my recent film viewings.Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell are reasonable leads and David Mazouz is more than up to their level. So the acting is better than average on the whole and somehow manages to rise above the material that was not worthy of them.'The Darkness' does have an atmospherically spooky look, an eerie music score and a few unsettling moments. Unfortunately, the creepiness and suspense not just doesn't come consistently, there is nowhere near enough of either. There is an over-reliance on scares, mainly of the jumpy kind, but few come off effectively. Again a few unsettling moments, but too much of them are easily foreseeable and derivative.Furthermore, too much is over-explained, there is far too much exposition (much of it clumsy and rambling) and too much is given away too soon. The characters aren't very interesting, not to mention very clichéd that it makes the distinct lack of originality even more obvious, making everything really predictable. The script is lazy and underwritten, with too much reliance on the scares, which are not strong enough to come over successfully, the ending is a very "that's it?" one and the intrusive and obvious sound effects telegraph the outcome of the scares early on in the build-ups. In summary, not terrible but mediocre and a waste of potential. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Greg McLean's 'The Darkness' is an exercise in clichés. The film tries almost every trick in the book in an attempt to rise above the rest but ends up looking thoroughly lacklustre. McLean is more a master of the torture-porn kind of horror than the supernatural and hence, this effort looks forced and half-baked. Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell try to do justice to their poorly written characters. The screenplay itself is devoid of any major scares (jumpscares even!). The climax is again too easily predictable and plays out more like a TV show than a film.