the audience applauded

The Age of Commercialism

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

When I saw the darkness, I felt like I needed to take out a ghost movie checklist and start listing everything I had seen before. Weird or Special needs child who communicates with the spirits? Check. Annoying, angry teenager that adds nothing to the plot? Check. Father with fidelity problems that doesn't believe in the spirits at first? Check. Mother with alcohol problems that seems crazy to everyone else? Check. The Darkness follows a strict character and story design and doesn't try to add anything unique or interesting. The movie is also terribly fast paced and tries to throw way too much in one sitting that everything just seems squished together and has no emotional impact. There are no real scares or thrills, only non-impactful jump scares that fall flat. The sad thing is that we have very good acting talent in this film, but the writing, directing, and editing is done so badly that the acting looks terrible.

Before anyone says anything about me watching The Darkness I have this to say: I WILL watch anything with Kevin Bacon in it. That's not to say I will like it though. This has to be one of his worst movies. Let's get going.Synopsis: A family returns from a Grand Canyon vacation, haunted by an ancient supernatural entity they unknowingly awakened and engages them in a fight for their survival. Starring: Kevin Bacon, Radha Mitchell Director: Greg McLeanThe Ugly: We already had one horrible remake of Poltergeist, why did we need another? Answer: we didn't. Now, this necessarily wasn't a direct remake, this movie added in some elements from two Stephen King novels called Desperation and The Regulators. Go look them up and you'll see what I mean. In the long run, this more like Poltergeist than its own movie.The Bad: The side stories in the movie. Did we need them as well? Not so much. Were they required? Yes they were. Here's why. They had a basis for a movie. At some point they realized they didn't have a long enough movie so they added a couple of story lines to add more to the movie. Not as bad as an obvious remake though.The Good: Here, the best part of the movie was the acting. Kevin Bacon always shines no matter what he does. Radha Mitchell is always good in the troubled wife role. Even Paul Reiser fit the role he was picked for. Too bad they didn't have a better script or director.Final Thoughts: Star power couldn't save this movie. It had potential, but fell drastically short.Rating: 4 out of 10

The darkness..where do i begin. family,grand canyon,evil spirit comes home,boring..there ya go,quicker way to say plot. This film is awful,i absolutely hated it,the plot was one of the most worst ever. This is like just thinking up the worst plot ever like a haunted shoe or a bottle of perfume from many centuries sent back to kill. The acting is also bad,its like a man just picked a bunch of random people to star in this..awful. The darkness is a terrible,no scary,disastrous horror film. Hate It!

Greg McLean's 'The Darkness' is an exercise in clichés. The film tries almost every trick in the book in an attempt to rise above the rest but ends up looking thoroughly lacklustre. McLean is more a master of the torture-porn kind of horror than the supernatural and hence, this effort looks forced and half-baked. Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell try to do justice to their poorly written characters. The screenplay itself is devoid of any major scares (jumpscares even!). The climax is again too easily predictable and plays out more like a TV show than a film.