The Darkness (2016)

I love scary movies. I love most things that come out of Blumhouse Productions since it's been around. Things like The Conjuring, Annabelle, Sinister, Insidious, all wonderful forays into the genre of spook. But The Darkness, which I thought had a lot of promise, is absolutely miserable, paling in comparison to the other films from the studio. It seems a desperate, highly formulaic premise that's a money grab at best. There is nothing original; The script is incredibly lazy, relying on jump scares and the musical score stabs. There are no likable characters with any redemptive qualities. It's another well off family in a big beautiful house that you'll never afford in a very basic plot that has zero substance. It's been done over and over, but better by Poltergeist, Paranormal Activity, Amityville, The Shining... the list goes on and on. This film tries very hard to simulate the recipe of the latter films in order to make money rather than entertain.

Great talents are wasted here, Kevin Bacon, most notably. The genre has had far better entries in the last couple of years, so there is simply no excuse for this.

Fmovies: I do not understand why Hollywood still makes films like "The Darkness"...

It is always the same thing. There is nothing new, no creativity. They change one or two elements on the script but in the end it is the same type of reheated and recycled haunting story.

If they had, at least, included some gratuitous nudity or sex to make things a little more interesting or less soporific the film could be watchable.

As it is, The Darkness is boring as it can possibly be, without any scares, and in the final act, the introduction of the healers and their magic feather is painfully ridiculous.

I wonder what forced Kevin Bacon to star in such drivel....

So this kid with Autism is more accessible to the preternatural and disturbs evil native American spirits that decide to disturb him and his family back.

It Reminds me of Stir of Echoes, which also star Keven Bacon, but is nowhere near as good as that movie. in comparison, Stir of Echoes looks like The Exorcist when standing right next to The Darkness.

The story had potential. Some evil native American spirits get their resting place disturbed, by some white folks (shocker), so in return, these spirits decide to unlock these guys inner most demons (mom's an alcoholic, the daughter is bulimic) to split up the family and drive them all crazy.

It was a brilliant idea, but it was done so corny. Even seasoned actor Keven Bacon looked cheesy delivering simple lines and trying to be serious as he reacted to the ghost.

It was a very sad display of what could have been gold. I don't know what went wrong, but I know this: Don't wast your time.

The Darkness fmovies. 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

This is simply a lame and lazy movie. It has the smallest seeds of potential I think in the aspect of the child with autism. There could be something with a horror movie that uses a child who has this disorder and has some sort of psychic or supernatural connections to things, it could make for a good premise for a movie. This isn't it, however. The Darkness is generic all the way down to its title - can you imagine the faces lit up when the actors (who did get paid anyway so whatever) are told they'll be in a new horror movie produced by Jason Blum (whatever you think of Blumhouse they made Whiplash so points there for that), and then comes a script called 'The Darkness' and those faces fall a little - and its laziness comes largely in execution.

These aren't all necessarily bad actors really; Kevin Bacon, Radha Mitchell, even Paul Reiser I've seen do excellent work in major films for major artists. Here, it's slumming in a story that feels like its grafted plot points and character beats from a Lifetime movie; the mother/wife who's an alcoholic; the philandering husband/father who can't keep it in his pants (until he decides to not to that so much due to the crazy s*** at home); the daughter who has bulimia since, you know, she has to be given something to do. And of course the son who is autistic (though we don't see that at the start of the movie, set at the Grand Canyon where he happens to plop into a hole and find some spooky rocks, woo rocks, scary), and the filmmakers use the autism more to keep things in the first half suspicious.

So in other words, it's not taking autism really seriously aside from it being a crutch to hold on to: there's some weird things going on in the house like (gasp) hand-prints and prints on a mirror during a shower, well you can blame it on the autistic kid Mikey, right? The kid is directed to be pretty one dimensional, and there's a few moments that are just laughably poor. And it all leads up to a conclusion that we've seen a thousand times with these possessed-house movies - and for some reason even though I believe the Anasazi are Native American in heritage the "healers" are Mexican because maybe they couldn't afford to hire Native American actors (and having actors speaking Spanish makes things more, uh, 'authentic' or scary).

This is weak by way of building up family drama (also it feels confused as if on the one hand the family had these problems before this phantom menace so to speak arrived, but on the other hand it's also meant to be like the ghosts make them more effed up, which is it) and by the numbers (plus logic stuff, simple things, like is the movie so cheap that they couldn't show the boy at a school - the actor playing him doesn't look too young to be in school as autistic kids *do* attend), and yet its laziness causes it to be borderline offensive. Could you at least TRY to build real suspense? Even jump scares, the more tired of the crutches of horror filmmakers today, at least give us something to do in a theater if only by motor-reaction or something. The jump scares here are non-existent to bare-bones (ooh, the son's behind her, whoops), and by the climax it's ultimately bloodless too with a PG-13 rating so, uh, kids can sit bored too? This is a movie made at the prestigious school for hacks, The University of Don't-Give-a-F***ery, and if you don't care then I don't, either. Kevin Bacon can do better.

The Darkness is, in my opinion, a pretty obvious Poltergeist knock off, with an American Indian mythology twist.

This film follows much the same formula made famous by Poltergeist. It makes a few distinctions, by drawing on American Indian mythology but beyond that, its business as usual.

That said, this film is in no way as creepy or frightening, as Poltergeist. The demons, look more like a bunch of bad extras from a cultural festival. Their evil is not really all that evil either. They feel more like bad tenants or squatters, who have personal hygiene issues. Hand washing in particular, is not their thing.

That said, in fairness this is not a bad film. Its moderately entertaining and it has a good cast, including Kevin Bacon, who I have a lot of time for. His performance helps lift this film and is complimented by a capable cast who generally share good chemistry.The family dynamic, in particular, is very believable in a middle aged, kind of yuppie-ish way.

I give The Darkness a six out of ten. Its not exceptional but it is still quite watchable.