SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Filipe Neto This is another excuse for a movie with haunted houses, a theme more than recurring in horror. So common that the emptiness of new ideas creates movies like this. The whole story is set in my neighboring country, Spain (effective, the film is Spanish such as his director/writer, Jaume Balagueró) and revolves around an American family who went to live there. Unfortunately, the family story and the relationships between the characters are never interested in the plot, which focuses only on the house. But even this brings no novelty, merely reconstructing the usual formulas of horror that every horror lover has seen countless times and countless ways. Thus, the film becomes predictable and uninteresting. I even guessed how it would end. Even so, it manages to create a sufficiently tense environment to provoke some scares. I simply hoped for something more. Lena Olin and Giancarlo Giannini were the actors that I liked the most, as their performance was regular, lacking behind them better material and a more competent director. The rest cast did not call my attention for the positive.

airsnob This has no gore ( since when did gore become horror) this has no fake boobs or babies being tortured. What this movie has is genius as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been scared to walk to the bathroom after a movie in decades. This movie did that. For two days. It's a smart ghost story, creepy, chilling and I just wanted go her the Heck out of my living room the entire time it was on. Much like a car accident , I couldn't stop. The plot; nothing spectacular there. It held up. The real meat and potatoes of this film are in atmosphere and direction. Goes to show how valuable a great Director is. The way it was filmed reminded me of one of my nightmares. It's like watching a nightmare on TV. For some reason, kids these days have turned into some real sadistic freaks. I haven't looked, but I'm willing to bet " I Spit on your Grave" , " Hostel" and " Saw" have better ratings than this gem. People want to watch the most gruesome things known to mankind and they call that horror and slap it with a 10. Because of how repulsive it was. On a human level. Ya, those people ( who I personally think have sadistic tendencies of their own) won't like this movie. Smart people will.

Dalbert Pringle Boy-oh-boy, I'm tellin' ya, this "uncensored" version of Darkness was certainly mighty tame by today's super-gruesome standards of horrific horror films.And, not only was its gore-level almost at the point of being anemic (which was truly unforgivable) - But, the effect of its overall scare-factor never once came close to scoring a frighteningly legitimate bull's-eye. Never.At times I thought that Darkness was, indeed, coming close to hitting its intended mark, but, then, it inexplicably held back at that crucial point of achieving its desired goal. And, so, Darkness failed to satisfactorily deliver the horrific goods.And, on top of that major disappointment, this film's story about a happy-go-lucky family who move into a house that holds within its walls an unspeakably terrifying secret, covered no new ground, whatsoever.Yep. You can bet that we've all certainly seen, in one way or another, this one's all too familiar and predictably prepackaged story umpteen bloody times.Mind you, Darkness did manage (at times) to create an atmosphere of tension-filled dread that actually held my attention to some degree.But, its mounting suspense that led up to its final, climatic "twist" lost tons of steam when a minor key-character in the story was put in the unfavorable position of having to explain (at verbatim) everything covering a long, 40-year stretch of time. This explanation conveniently tied up all of the loose ends (leading up to this frenzied moment) and even threw a solar eclipse into the mix, for good measure.Anyways - I figure that a lot of this film's significant downfalls can be attributed to its rating of being suitable for those viewers 14 years and older.So, with that in mind, any out-and-out horror, and gore, is certainly going to be carefully held in check so as not to totally gross-out, or corrupt, those dear, impressionable, prepubescent minds of the younger generation.

Leofwine_draca DARKNESS is one of those 'all style, no substance' films. It looks impressive, with a dark and brooding atmosphere brought to the screen by REC director Jaume Balaguero, but that's all it is: a collection of mildly eerie scenarios floating adrift in search of a real story.I'll readily admit that I had no real idea of what the central storyline was supposed to be, or even why I was supposed to care. GAME OF THRONES's Iain Glen bags a decent role as a family man suffering from a rare genetic condition, but even his admittedly impressive scenes seem to have little to do with the central thrust of the tale.Instead it's all about mood building and horror clichés, with flickering lights and annoying shaky-cam work that makes it hard to see what's going on. Anna Paquin seems to have been cast for the sole purpose of wandering around in a little top, and Lena Olin's role is equally extraneous. The film really hurts from the lack of sympathetic characters, and even the reliable Giancarlo Giannini is given little to do.Come the mildly ridiculous ending, I wondered why I'd bothered sitting through this, because there's absolutely nothing that hasn't been done many times before.