orty years ago, in a small Spanish village, seven children vanished. Six were never heard
from again. The seventh escaped on the night of a full solar eclipse, with confused tales of being held prisoner in a dark house. He was never able to provide the authorities with enough information to uncover the fate of the others.
Cut to the present day. An American family, led by father Mark (Glen) and mother Maria (Olin), has moved into an old country manor in Spain. Mark, in particular, is happy to be reunited with his own father, Albert (Giannini), a prominent doctor he hasn't seen much since his parents split up during his childhood. As for the children, teen Regina (Paquin) and younger brother Paul (Enquist), they seem to be adjusting well. Regina has continued her swimming practice and met an attractive local boy named Carlos (Fele Martinez). And Paul is content to sit in his room and draw pictures of children with his new box of colored pencils.
Alas, there are signs of trouble. Dad's chemical imbalance, which causes wild, irrational behavior unless he takes his medication, seems to be flaring up again. Paul discovers an oozing darkness under his bed, which at first seems content with sucking in and devouring his colored pencils. A hidden room under the stairs reveals a cache of odd artifacts. Ghostly children appear and disappear. A stern-looking old lady disappears from an aged photograph. And the floorboards in the living room, pried loose by a manic Dad, reveal an oval platform that just might be a sacrificial altar.
Regina is the only one who sees gathering menace in all these developments. Enlisting her boyfriend's help, she investigates and uncovers evidence of her new home's unsettling past. It all hinges on an evil ritual, intent on awakening a hellish "darkness" and requiring the sacrifice of seven children at the hands of those who love them. Forty years ago, during the
total solar eclipse, the ritual failed when only six children were taken. But another solar eclipse is coming, Dad is acting stranger and stranger, the ritual can still be completed if the seventh child is sacrificed, and the darkness is hungry. ...
Not-so-great expectations
Experienced moviegoers know that there are many ways to recognize a turkey from a distance. Films that sit on the shelf for years, only to be released with little or no promotion, are usually unmitigated disasters. So are those that appear without any advance reviews, and those released at odd times of the year. Darkness, which is already two years old, and which was released in the United States on Christmas Day with no reviews and few if any ads or trailers announcing its imminent arrival, has all the hallmarks of a major dud. Clearly, those who controlled this film's domestic fate had little faith in its reception, and dumped it into theatres hoping to recoup some losses.
They're not entirely wrong in that. The Christmas-Day showing experienced by this critic was
attended by a tiny audience of horror fans who clearly expected an explosive, effects-heavy roller-coaster ride of the Nightmare on Elm Street variety and who were instead baffled to the point of anger by the deliberate, European moodiness of a film intent on establishing a sustained aura of dread. They reacted to touches like the many fleeting glimpses of spectral
children, watching the growing conflict within the film's endangered family, with impatience and
derision. Fifteen minutes in, long before the film sprung its traps, the folks in the back row were already shouting things like, "Oh, man! This is baw-ring! When is something going to happen awready?"
Surprisingly enough: Darkness doesn't entirely suck. Indeed, in some ways it's quite good. It's not interested in providing a roller-coaster ride punctuated by moments of violent shock, but instead in adding successive layers of creepiness and unease. It doesn't actually pick up speed until the last half hour or so, at which point it provides a nasty series of reversals involving who's being prepped for slaughter and who's being manipulated into wielding the sacrificial knife. And the ending, which is black indeed, arrives with a minimum of fuss: Terrible things happen, but audiences who require CGI monsters or italicized explanations might fail to register the damnation being depicted on-screen. Certainly that Christmas-Day audience did. Judging from their comments, they missed the point completely.
Darkness does have its moments of distracting silliness. For instance, there's a strong streak of Buffyitis in the ease with which Regina and Carlos, investigating the odd phenomena in the local library, immediately find a hoary old volume with a convenient, profusely illustrated entry on the very evil ritual they need to find out about. (Just how are such books
listed in the card catalogue, and where are they shelved?) Mom seems a little too eager to write off the most disconcerting harbingers of doom as just Dad being Dad again. And a longstanding movie phenomenon that Roger Ebert calls the Law of the Conservation of Characters makes it a tad too easy to identify the evil mastermind behind it all: Just find the too-recognizable supporting player who would otherwise have not much reason for being there. Such figures don't often show up just to say hi.
Make no mistake. Darkness is not a great film, or even an unusually good one. It's a bit too dark for its own good, and it doesn't really come to life until that final, dizzying series of reversals. Its best element is that black ending. But it didn't deserve to be dumped the way it has been. Haunted-house fans will, no doubt, rediscover it on DVD.
