Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Academy Awards nominee for Best Foreign Movie (Poland) about the true story of a Catholic Polish sewer man who helped a group of Jews survive for over a year in the sewer system underneath the Jewish ghetto.Excellent production design, good direction and good acting by the lead actor.However, I didn't feel the writing was good enough to hold a 140-minutes movie. It would have worked better as a much shorter film.Agnieszka Holland's older movie concerning the subject of the holocaust, "Europa, Europa (1990)" was much better, as far as I remember.

IN DARKNESS is a Polish, German and Canadian co-production. It is based on an actual incident that happened in Nazi-occupied Poland. So-called "holocaust" movies interest me, not as an indictment of any one people, but as a look into the "darkness" within mankind and the trigger that lets it come to the surface. The film delivers a knockout punch, focusing on a group of Jews who took to the sewers, enduring unspeakable indignities, while waiting for the war to end. I choose not to reveal any spoilers, but I feel I can say that the movie is a remarkable achievement, shot in dark and drab colors, that will keep you riveted, even as it is quite difficult to watch. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2012 Oscars.

I have never written a review on IMDb before, but I am compelled to after having watched this film with the Girl in the Green Sweater, one of the survivors in the Lvov group, and her son and fifty neighbors. The story, she said, does not veer from reality, but softens it a bit relative to what her 8 year old eyes saw.She spoke with us after the film and frankly, it is impossible to not be moved by this film. I originally was watching with my bride before going home to work some more for the day, but I stayed throughout the film and the Q&A after. Without remembering this kind of history, we cannot help but repeat its evil. Watch this film.

'In Darkness' proved to be a worthy Polish contender against the foreign film winner 'A Separation'. This film to me is a more successful version of 'Schindler's List' - similar in terms of the portrayal of an unlikely hero who had no reason to save the Jews but did it in the end.(Why so? Schindler's List covered a much wider span, all above ground, with a longer time frame as well, and yet failed miserably as it chose to tone down A LOT of what could have happened in reality given the weight of the situation. I expected more from it as it is not even realistically outstanding to some of the other commendable Holocaust-related work of art.) This film focuses not on the atrocities in the surface, but more on the intricate details in its core matter - things happening underground. Roughly half of the film happens inside the sewers, but with enough details that reminded me of "Hunger" even though the dire situation were not full-fledged in my opinion.We not only get to know of the conflicts between the hero, his non-Jew community against the Jews, but also the conflicting portrayal of the Jews themselves who are not all one-dimensional characters unlike in some other movies (i.e. not overly depressed or in a state of hopelessness, they actually hate each other, some of them are annoying/ traitors/ greedy etc).I too believe things are pretty toned down as well in this film, as living under the sewers in such a situation where the water rendered unusable, the stench unbearable (augmented by the stench of corpses), absence of light, hygiene and proneness to diseases/fatal accidents could easily cause multiple levels of discord and unwanted psychological behaviors.I have read that the director deviated from the real account a little as some of the characters 'killed' are actually survivors today. But in a way, maybe it is for the better as the film is already disturbing enough.Also, some of the scenes done above ground are a little bit unnatural...hence I could not grant a rating above 7 stars. But all in all, this is a well made Holocaust-related film but it is also a film about humanity that is much better than average.