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Well... it's better'n The Ring II
Something had me wanting to see this, perhaps because as I
said in my
Amityville Horror remake review, I'm a sucker for a good
haunted house movie. Maybe I'm a sucker for the idea
of a haunted house movie, because they sure seem
harder'n'hell to pull off, if you look at what Hollywood
churns out. I'm still working up the courage to rent
Bogeyman. But I did get myself to rent
Darkness, the convincing factor being the presence of Anna
"She Made Rogue So F**king Hot" Paquin. I also like Lena
Olin. After watching it I popped on this here internet
and began doing some research on the movie, trying to figure
out how it did, why it did that badly and what the hell was
up with it. It's not a bad movie. I
guess that's the best place to start. It's not a great
movie, and it steals too damn much from the established
classics (and bombs) of the genre, particularly Kubrick's
The Shining (right down to the two girls walking down the
hallway) to be considered a good movie, but it certainly
isn't a bad movie. What kept me with it was, oddly
enough, something most other critics have maligned it for:
The pacing. I've recently realized that all my
favorite horror is coming out of Spain and South America,
and not Japan, the way most of the rest of the US seems
currently convinced that country is making the best horror.
The Spanish, however, have a certain cultural way of
presenting ideas of death and fear that connect for me the
most, my favorite at the moment being Guillermo Del Toro's
The Devil's Backbone. Wonderful, creepy, and dead-on
scary sometimes. The pacing of these movies, and the
time taken to make them intelligent, giving us a good reason
to leave rationality behind and be flat-out scared, is what
I like the most about these. Darkness takes the time
to do just this. Director and co-writer Balaguero
didn't bore me at all, but instead really drew me in.
The problem is that the film does, indeed, takes way too
much from other haunted house movie (even getting blood to
flow down the walls for the finale, a fact which I greatly
regretted) and that he doesn't, even though he gets so
close, completely explain why certain things happen. I
can't expand on this too much without giving away secrets,
but as the movie does go the way of most others, I can say a
little: There's a ritual involved (of course) that
needs to be completed (of course), but why does one of the
people who wanted completed, seem so unsure of whether or
not he does? On top of that is this question:
Why doesn't one of the main characters avert the entire
situation by merely remembering why he shouldn't go to the
damn house SINCE HE'S F**KING BEEN THERE BEFORE AND BAD SH*T
HAPPENED THEN TOO? Or is that asking too much?
Yes, the character does have a medical condition, but they
never mention memory problems being a symptom.
The film is faulty, there's no denying that. The
script, first of all, was obviously written in Spanish, and
you know what, something definitely got lost in translation.
Not only are some of the lines literally exact translations,
and therefore clunky and nonsensical, but the plot has
gotten confused. Secondly, the actors, though all
good, never gel as a cast. From the start they feel
not like a family but like a group of people who have just
met. There's is NO chemistry, and while some develops
(very little) between Paquin and the young boy by the end,
it's too little too late. Thirdly, we have a
White Noise issue:
Just like in White Noise there are three beings (yes, three
again) who mysteriously appear as dangerous apparitions, who
never really do much or are explained within the design of
the tale. They are used MUCH better than in White
Noise, mind you, making infinitely more sense here than
there, and looking much more threatening, but we don't
really understand there part. I'm going to do
my damnedest to track down a copy of The Nameless,
Balaguero's Spanish horror film before this which is
supposed to be tremendous, and see how he does there.
The reason I am going to do this is because there were a
good many moments in Darkness where I was honestly chilled
by his directing and his control of images. Balaguero
manages to make us feel trapped, claustrophobic, confined
and honestly screwed in his settings, and then he does
something to make your skin crawl. With a better
script and no Hollywood producers, I bet he rocks.
It's my understanding that this movie was on
Miramax's shelves for three years before it was released.
I see why, and I see why it was released at the height of
the J-horror craze. And you know what?
For all it's issues, it's a helluva lot
better than The Ring II. |
