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    Darkness Falls

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    There’s not much to say about “Darkness Falls”. It’s a horror movie that tries to take a traditional fairy tale and make it scary but doesn’t really work. While it’s competently made, it’s mostly unremarkable. The film is set in the town of Darkness falls, where years ago a kind woman named Matilda used to give gold coins to any children who gave her their lost teeth. After a fire, Matilda was horribly burned and her skin now so sensitive that she was forced to wear a porcelain mask over her face. After two children went missing, the townspeople assumed the old woman was responsible and lynched her. The truth was that Matilda was not responsible for the children’s disappearance and the two kids turned up safe and sound the next day. Matilda’s wrongful death left a curse on a town. Now, whenever a child loses his last tooth, he can expect a visit from Matilda’s specter. She is forced to reside in the shadows but if you don’t close your eyes while she is in the room, she’ll kill you. Her vengeance goes further. Even if you manage to evade her by staying in the light she will haunt you until you slip up.

    There’s not a lot of logic to this movie. This curse has been going on for at least a decade but none of the adults in the town seem to be aware of it. You would think that cowering in your bedroom while a ghost comes in and takes you last tooth would be a very memorable event but none of the adults in the film ever acknowledge the myth or discuss it. In fact, it’s dismissed it as a childhood fantasy. The only character who appears to know what’s going on is our main character, Kyle (Chaney Kley) Even internally, the film cheats with its own mythology. The characters in the film are so set on ignoring the story of Matilda that they go out of their way to ignore Kyle’s advice and a significant amount of characters get themselves killed by wandering into the darkness around them or shooting out the lights in the area so that they can be grabbed by the supernatural creature. Matilda goes from killing anyone who sees her face, to killing anyone in her vicinity in the climax (if you look carefully, there is one character towards the end of the film that gets grabbed for no reason aside from stepping outside of the ring of lights above her) Towards the very end of the picture we learn about a weakness of hers (so basically a way for our characters to make it out alive) but this comes out of nowhere and seems to contradict the whole “if you see her face, she’s coming to get you” idea.

    As bad as I’m making “Darkness Falls” sound, it really isn’t that awful. It’s just bland and eventually you get so bored with it that you start nitpicking and looking for plot holes or lapses in logic. If any praise is deserved, it’s that the special effects are quite good and there are some genuine moments of suspense. If you want to show a horror film to your kids, this one’s appropriate. There’s no gore, not a lot of violence and no sex whatsoever. Younger audiences that aren’t as familiar with the horror genre won’t see the jump scares coming. It’s faint praise but goes to show that there’s pretty much an audience for any movie out there, even if it’s a really indiscriminating one. As a horror film, I can’t really recommend it overall, but you might get some kicks out of it if you just happen to catch it on TV sort of thing. “Darkness Falls” is more mediocre than bad and its biggest sin really is that it’s not very memorable. (Theatrical version on Netflix, October 31, 2013)

    5
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    adamwatchesmovies@  11.9.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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