What Can I Say about Darkness Falls? It is One of My Favorites!
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Some reviews of Darkness Falls denounce this horror movie as being too formula. But if you're looking for a good scary movie and are prepared to ignore the "horror intelligencia" that say that you shouldn't love it, you'll be glad you did.
Review by The Horror Czar, Don Sumner
2006
Release: 2003
Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Starring:
Chaney Kley as Kyle Walsh
Emma Caulfield as Caitlin 'Cat' Greene
Lee Cormie as Michael Greene
Grant Piro as Larry Fleishman
Remember when you were a kid? Alone, in bed at night. Can’t sleep (because your mom probably made you go to bed at 8:00 PM) and so you peer around your room in the dark. What’s that shadow on the floor from moonlight spilling in from the window? A scarecrow? And what IS that I see through the closet door that’s open a crack? An eye? Oh no…under the bed…what’s that noise?!?
Once in a while there is a movie that captures the fears constructed in a child’s vivid imagination that never completely leave us even into adulthood. Darkness Falls is such a movie.
Darkness Falls begins with a boy, Kyle Walsh (Chaney Kley), who has lost his last tooth. He puts it under his pillow as any good lad should. He knows, however, that the town lore in (the cheerily named) Darkness Falls reports that the tooth fairy is actually the spirit of a woman that was persecuted and generally treated badly by those that lived 150 years ago, and that this “fairy” will do her job correctly and replace the tooth with silver unless…you have the NERVE to see her face while she’s replacing your tooth for money.
If you do see her, it is told, you will be killed horribly. (She is, it would seem, a bit sensitive about her burned up mess of a face) Talk about having trouble sleeping…who could sleep knowing that some frightful frauen is going to come in your room and dare you to take a peek…..
Well, he can’t sleep, and he does see her…and the result is that his mother is killed when she comes to check out the closet to prove that everything is alright.
Well Kyle is sent to a mental institution among rumors that he brutally murdered his mother…and wrought with terror of the dark. It seems that the tooth fairy will not rest until she punishes Kyle for peeking, but she can only attack in the dark.
12 years later Kyle is still living in a brightly lit world, wielding flashlights to fend off the attacker of the darkness. He comes back to town when his childhood sweetheart is concerned that her little brother is afraid of the dark and is apparently being stalked by the same spooky specter.
Is Darkness Falls a bit formula? Sure. Does it use many of the tried and true horror tactics to startle and scare the audience? Definitely. Does this mean that one should automatically discount the value and “scare factor” of this flick? Absolutely not.
Sometimes I want to see a scary movie because it is, well, scary. The tooth fairy monster is scary, that’s for sure. She darts through the dark to snatch people up and carry them away – and she is very creepy and well done through good special effects. The monster herself is original and believably crafted. The scenes are interestingly constructed and promote jumping and nail biting. The one thing that I didn’t like, however, was that Darkness Falls was extremely light on the gore. I think that the movie ran out of “blood money”.
Listen folks, don’t watch Darkness Falls looking for an academy award winning presentation. Just watch it because it’s a good scary movie that is fun to watch with friends with the lights off…so that you will spend the rest of the night doing a double-take at everything that seems to move in the shadows. Questions or comments about Darkness Falls? Discuss it on The Ossuary Forums!!
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