Crappy film

Better Late Then Never

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I know this movie came out in 2003 so it may be exempt from this complaint but I'm lodging this complaint anyway. Please stop with the child-drawing-creepy/ominous-picture cliché. It wasn't terribly essential to the plot but it did play a role.It took some time for the true nature of "Darkness" to materialize and it wasn't that impressive. From the beginning the characters were just too odd, primarily the daughter Regina (Anna Paquin). Either she was whispering or speaking in an expressionless monotone fashion which just didn't seem normal. Later other family members exhibited socially awkward moods and behaviors. I suppose it all could have been attributed to the "Darkness" but I don't think so.The climax of the movie involved extremely strange behavior and a shaky cam; both of which I didn't understand. Even if I were to say that the home they lived in had a psychological effect upon them that still doesn't explain why the camera was shaking--or was it supposed to be an earthquake? For whatever reason shaking the camera has come to signify fear and distress. What happened to screaming and running to a suspenseful musical score? Sigh.

Darkness (2002): Dir: Jaume Balaguero / Cast: Anna Panquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen, Giancarlo Giannini, Fele Martinez: Dreadful piece of dirt that should only be seen from behind the darkness of closed eye lids. Stupid concept where morons enter a haunted house and strange things occur all the while they are too ignorant to leave. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. A boy's colored pencils ominously roll away on him. The father of the house goes into vicious spells. It is all very lame and about as scary as an episode of Fraggle Rock. Director Jaume Balaguero makes the drama aspects look corny but the thriller elements didn't exactly add up either. Acting is dreadful although Anna Panquin is a capable young talent. She plays the daughter who is the only one who senses that something is wrong. Something is very much wrong in that her career led to this travesty. It is also sad to see Lena Olin brought down by such flat material. She plays Panquin's mother in denial. Iain Glen plays Olin's husband who has a history of abuse. Giancarlo Giannini is also featured in a supporting role but this film will likely provide only darkness to anyone's career. Although production is fine, the rest of the film is a disaster. It offers nothing that hasn't been xeroxed countless times. There is no reason to see this junk unless one has the urge to spend ten bucks to catch up on a couple hours of sleep. Score: 1 / 10

It's another Re-watch, I seen this once before, On DVD, Well , I don't where that DVD went to anyway, but this was netflix so I gave it another go! I remember fews scenes from last time I seen, which was years ago! I thought Idea of the movie was really good, it had some decent setting, there could have been some really good moment here and there in this movie. Some scenes were decent however those scene didn't last to long, to be keep that tense feel to those scenes. I thought the movie worth watching, until the last 15 minutes, which I thought really bad, I didn't really think it fitted with the rest of the movie at all. 3 out of 10

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.