Review of The Darkness (2016) by Tyler G — 12 May 2016

Wow! And I mean wow! Just got back from seeing this most banal and boring of horror films in recent, and not too recent memory. When I first saw a film called "The Darkness" I thought it was a documentary about the band.

And now having sat through this "horror" film, and I use that term very, very lightly as the only scares in it wouldn't frighten a three year old, even a documentary about Kanye would have been better than this.

Where do I start? It's a total rip of Poltergeist in every single way down to the little kid who friends the spirits and the whole totally new plot device of the "Indian burial ground" - yeah, good one writers, that'll win you an Oscar for most original screenplay.

Oh and the kid finds scary....wait for it....rocks. I know, could you get anything more terrifying than haunted rocks. And the spirits make themselves known by finger-painting on everything and everyone they can literally lay their hands on.

This film is every maids worse nightmare. The dialogue is stilted and non-sensical is many parts and the plot twists and turns so much you feel you're watching 10 different films. To me the worst thing was the whole set-up of picture perfect ol' USA suburbia.

I mean, who lives like these people? I noticed the writer (alls the director) was Greg McLean - an Australian. And the whole set up reads like it was written by someone who watched a lot of 80's American horror films and still thinks people in the US live like that now (and even back then people didn't).

There is nothing original in this, and worst of all, for a horror film it lacks any understanding of what a modern horror film is about. Poor Kevin Bacon, he's made some good horror in his career, but unfortunately, he jumped on a dud here.

It's all just really a great big mess.