Review of Darkness Rising (2017) by John M — 15 Nov 2017

Not sure why this exists. So this is about a young woman (Tara Holt) who breaks into the house she grew up in, which is now about to be torn down because it is so dilapidated. She has the help of her boyfriend (Bryce Johnson) and her best friend (Katrina Law), but surviving the night may prove to be a challenge when the house's history starts to rear its ugly head.

This is bad. I mean really bad. As I have said many times in recent history, I watched this because it is on Netflix streaming and it has a short runtime (only 80 minutes long). I feel like I made a huge mistake, even considering that this counts towards my movie quota for the year.

I guess this is collateral damage for blindly watching movies on Netflix: you are going to step in some real turds along the way. At the beginning of this, it almost feels like this is like a movie sequel for some sort of television series that I hadn't heard of, but then I quickly realized that was only because this feels like TV acting, and not from a channel that is known for its quality programming.

This was done on the cheaaaaaap, and it has Paranormal Activity level of scares, only without the know-how, effectiveness, or general competency on how to make a movie. Even for low rent horror fans, there is no reason for you to watch this, as it only has scares that have been done before, you see them coming from a mile away, and they are highlighted with score swells in the violin section, which is exactly what you do if there is not something scary happening, but you want to try to get a jump out of your audience anyway.

The only thing more forgettable than this movie is the generic title, and I can promise you this will be less than an afterthought for me as of next month. It got on my nerves as there is all too much frustrating yelling done by these characters.

.. at a house. Also, it takes this gang of 20-year-olds entirely too much time to decide to even try leaving the house, and I had a big disconnect that this didn't happen until about the midway point.

I don't even think the ending made a ton of sense right before it just cuts off, and it wraps up in such a way that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The only positives I can say about this is that I thought the very opening scene was alright (which Ted Raimi is in for some reason), and it does make a point of showing you how much it would suck to have bleach poured on your face.

This movie scrapes the bottom of the horror barrel, and you should skip it if this was on your watchlist for some reason.