While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

It is rare to chance on the first few films of a Hollywood actor obviously destined for better stuff and this is no exception. This is Brendan Fraser post California/Encino man and pre-Mummy etc in a sexy movie about passions bubbling under the surface. Fraser plays the Darkly Noon of the title who is found by a labourer and taken to his friends, Caly and Clay who reside in the forest. For the first 30 minutes plus of the film, only Caly is present, a beautiful and at times teasing presence in the film from Noon's perspective. Extremely religious Noon has difficulty reconciling Caly and his feelings for her until her lover, Clay returns and, troubled by their love for each other and the teachings of his parents and other strangers in the woods, Noon fights, literally against his rescuers quite spectacularly.

The more mentally challenging a movie is, the more noteworthy it becomes. Philip Ridley has written great gangster epic The Krays, directed by Peter Medak, and Ridley's debut as a director was with Reflecting Skin. The Passion of Darkly Noon deals with serious subject matter and has a potential to be very challenging and stunning piece of art, and fortunately it succeeds almost, but not entirely.*THIS PARAGRAPH DOESN'T INCLUDE SPOILERS, BUT DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE FILM* Brendan Fraser plays Darkly Noon, a young boy who is found on the road in the middle of a huge forest where beautiful Callie (Ashley Judd, the cutest thing on Earth) and his husband Clay (Viggo Mortensen) lives. Callie's truck driver friend finds Darkly on the road unconscious and takes him to Callie to safe. Callie cures Darkly and lets him stay with her house for a while; Clay is not home, but he should come back in couple of days. During these days, hugely traumatic and suffered Darkly becomes obsessed with Callie's sensuality and beauty (both mental and physical) and falls in love with the beautiful girl. It is obvious that when Clay comes back, Darkly's love gets very bad obstacles and the total journey to terror and despair begins.. *NO MORE SPOILERS*This sounds very interesting and I had very high expectations for this film, and then I finally got it on VHS and watched it. The film is a gripping study about misunderstanding of religion and its results to young kids when they are subjected to this kind of fanaticism in the childhood. It is horrible that this kind of narrow mindedness happen in the world today and certain individuals' thoughts about God and religion are so rotten and evil, even though they think they are on the mission of the Word and do only His will. When films like Antonia Bird's Priest become banned or raise huge resistance among "religious" groups, it is obvious these films become even more important and show that this kind of madness still exists. In country where I live, there are also people that "live by the Bible" and only do horrible harm to their children and leave traumas that perhaps never heal.Darkly thinks that all he's been told is the Truth and anything else is wrong. Callie tries to discuss with him about these things, but he doesn't listen and doesn't want to even think about it. I'm not moralizing, but when this kind of traumatic people appear, it is usually more or less their parents' fault that they've more or less ruined their children's life, because my opinion is that childhood is perhaps the most important phase in man's life since all the things are new for child and what he's/she's taught, will without a doubt affect him for the rest of his life. There is one little scene at the end of this film, when Darkly seems to stop and think a little bit, but it is too late in that point for him and Callie. I'm mostly irritated by the lack of depth of the characters in this film. This could have been even more powerful film if these two main protagonist Callie and Darkly were little more developed and deep, and if between them was created a strong emotional relationship. There are couple of very bad mistakes in the film that tone their relationship down, but still there is strong scenes between these two, too. The scene where Callie finally realizes what Darkly has done to himself and starts to cry is among these strong moments of the film, and brought to my mind the finale in Roman Polanski's Chinatown, which has very powerful last scene. If Ridley had written his characters with even more empathy and emotion, The Passion of Darkly Noon would've probably been worth a masterpiece status.Visually this film is incredible, as the photography is gorgeous and the forest is captured very beautifully, and the film looks pretty much like Heavenly Creatures and also David Lynch films. The beauty of the forest is ruined only by evil men, "monsters", and this brings again symbolism about the world we live in, and what it could be if humans were little different deep inside. There are beautiful colors and weird camera angels and surreal elements, like the big shoe and "Ma and Pa" characters. I think Lynch would probably like this film. The mythic atmosphere lasts through the film and should keep the viewer very interested and almost nailed to the seat. Also worth mentioning is the beauty of Ashley Judd, who really is an angel in here and is another element found in Lynch movies. I can only wonder what this film would be like, if Judd's and Fraser's characters were emotionally perfectly developed, but still I'm definitely not disappointed.The Passion of Darkly Noon is great, beautiful and symbolic film and lacks only the things described above about the characters. I give this 8/10 rating and still highly recommended it if you love demanding and all the way non-mainstream and intelligent cinema.

this movie is actually the worst movie ever made... i know people have told you that "plan nine from outerspace" was the worst movie ever made, come to think of it i think that was the tagline... but "the passion of darkly noon by far blows it away with its awfull acting, terrible story, unexplaned occurances, and it's massive quantities of unimportant crap that is thrown in there to make you think your drunk. the first tiem i saw this i actually was drunk... it was on HBO at 3:30 in the morning and i was laughing my head off because it was soo silly. i tried to blame the s***ty story on my drunkness but when i saw it again, sober, i was sadly mistaken. this movie is crap. i did buy this movie just to show it to people and make them hate brenden frasier. you lose all respect you ever had for him after watching this.

Oh dear. This is such a dreadful movie. The guy from "The Mummy" and Ashley Judd - together at last. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - there has never been a good movie with the aforementioned Ms. Judd in it. Her career consists entirely of inept, banal, stupid movies. "Darkly Noon" is perhaps the zenith of her miserable little filmography, being pretentious and witless, "arty" and crass, cringe-inducing and hysterically funny (for all the wrong reasons). Take, as an example of this movie's momentous ineptitude, the final scene (one of my favourite in all movies), when the shoe floats downstream. Oh dear God, this is film-making as torture, as punishment, as though we, the hapless audience, have committed some crime and must be forced to watch deep and meaningful nonsense for the rest of our lives. Please, if you really think this is a good film, read a few books (preferably ones without pictures) and see a few genuinely intelligent movies. Soon. Hurry up! Time is running out!