The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The film starts with a young man stumbling through a forest He is obviously in distress. Brendan Fraser plays the man and we discover later that his name is Darkly Noon. The name comes from I Corinthians, 13:12, "For now we see through a glass, darkly…" Does that have some sort of significance? He is helped by a passerby named Jude and taken to a house in the forest. A young woman named Callie lives there. She is played by Ashley Judd whose entire wardrobe seems to consist of clothes given to her by a smaller woman with a taste for skimpy attire. Is she an emotionally confused free spirit or is she a sexpot tease? Whichever, it certainly confuses Darkly. It seems he was raised in a community of religious nuts who were so outrageously fundamentalist that they were set upon by their neighbors and slaughtered one and all, and only he escaped alone to tell the tale. Despite, or perhaps because of his strict upbringing, Darkly becomes burdened by longings with which he is ill equipped to deal. Matters are made worse when Callie's boyfriend comes back. This is Clay, played by Viggo Mortensen. He is a carpenter who doesn't seem to make anything other than cradles and coffins. Darkly becomes more and more obsessed and starts indulging in self-abuse of every kind, some of it involving barbed wire. It's not pretty. Then things start to get weird. A giant silver shoe floats by. Darkly meets a strange old woman who spends all of her time wandering around the forest with a dog and a rifle and ranting. Jude, who is the one contact with the outside world for these people, also seems to be their one contact with reality. He tries to get everybody to calm down but they're all too busy making cryptic remarks and dealing in symbolism. The ending is totally bizarre, involving an elephant and an explanation of the silver shoe that only confuses matters even further.

This is an unusual film. The summary above does a fair description of the plot, but what it doesn't describe is the air of magic around the forest and everyone's encounters within it. It's hard to describe this, except to say that the film both brings you together with one character's descent into madness while also introducing you to people who seem as though they stepped right out of a story book.At times, it has the feel of some children's tale of a lost soul wandering through the woods, encountering various odd characters. Some are endearing, some are frightening. The difference is that this isn't a children's tale, and the emotions and imperatives are being experienced by adults, though not always with a mature sense of self-control.Ashley Judd is both eerily wistful and intensely sensuous as a young lady seemingly without any concept of shame or self consciousness, and deeply in love. Brendan Fraser does a credible job of portraying an inexperienced, painfully conflicted child-man and seems to sweat this tension from every pore.

The weirdly named Darkly Noon (Brendan Frasier) is the sole survivor of a Waco-style massacre and a religious fanatic. He is taken in by Ashley Judd, who lives in a isolated cabin in a huge forest. The first set of tensions come when Noon's strong attraction towards Judd clash with his religious beliefs. The second arise when Judd's mute boyfriend Viggo Mortensen returns. And then hermit Grace Zabriskie befriends Noon and tells him Judd is a witch. This is pretty impressive stuff from writer and director Philip Ridley. He's not afraid to risk being pretentious and, in truth, he is at times. Mostly, though, he creates an unsettling, powerful piece with the texture of a nightmare. Surreal at times (a giant, glittering boot floating down a river?) it conveys the powerful and enigmatic nature of both human emotions and the unexplored forest. It's clear that things are going to end bloody but, crucially, you can't guess for who; because at times it seems the coquettish Judd might be a witch.

this movie is actually the worst movie ever made... i know people have told you that "plan nine from outerspace" was the worst movie ever made, come to think of it i think that was the tagline... but "the passion of darkly noon by far blows it away with its awfull acting, terrible story, unexplaned occurances, and it's massive quantities of unimportant crap that is thrown in there to make you think your drunk. the first tiem i saw this i actually was drunk... it was on HBO at 3:30 in the morning and i was laughing my head off because it was soo silly. i tried to blame the s***ty story on my drunkness but when i saw it again, sober, i was sadly mistaken. this movie is crap. i did buy this movie just to show it to people and make them hate brenden frasier. you lose all respect you ever had for him after watching this.