Review of The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007) by Movielonely94 — 10 Jun 2011

After seeing such great fantasy adaptations like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia, other fantasy novels were trying to be successful. Some of them grossed $100 million dollars at first, but only one of them flopped and is why we get 20th Century Fox and Walden Media's The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, based on a 5-book masterpiece by Susan Cooper.

It tells the story about Will Stanton, a 14-year old typical kid, who learns that he is the last of the Old Ones called the Light who spent many years trying to defend themselves from the Dark. The Rider appears and tries to destroy the Light and in order to defeat him, Will must find and guard the six signs of the Light and only them can they win the battle against the Dark.

OK. Some of you already know what the story was about since it was done a lot of times and I have no time to waste, so time for my opinion.

Some of you won't believe this, but I've never read the book series to begin with, but with this being an adaptation, it's just sort of a bland movie. Not good, but not terrible. It's just a mediocre fantasy movie and here's the reason why.

1. Characterization: I'm not going to talk about characters like Will Stanton, Merriman, Mrs. Greythorne, The Rider, Maggie, and the rest of the characters. They did okay at their performances, but there were a lot of flaws in this movie and only one of them counts. In the book, Will Stanton was 11 years old and was kind of shy and a bit of a loner. In the movie, Will Stanton was changed from 11 year old British boy to a 14 year old American teenager and he is also shy, but kind of typical and expresses his feelings in the most irritating and emotional way. That's a nice way to change so much, 20th Century Fox. THe rest of the characters were okay, but Maggie was changed from a maid to a love interest of Will, the black horse was changed into the white horse and that's all I'm going to say about the flaws 2. The pacing: It is just plain awful. The first 20 minutes were okay since they tried to show some of Will and his family and the rest of the scenes turned out fine, but the rest of the storyline had to just rush towards the end. Of course, I'm not talking about the CGI in this movie. They were OK, but not given enough screen time. The dialogue doesn't quite cover it up due to its weak storytelling and shaky cameras.

And 3. The direction: It's just plain mediocre. Not horrible, but not that good either. Some of the sets were too cheesy and bland to begin with, but that's not worth saying much. It tried its best to bring the potential of the book, but fails miserably with oversued clichés and like I said, the rushed storyline. The only aspect that I liked about the direction was the action sequences. Even though they weren't included in the book, they seemed to be very interesting and very good, IMO.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising isn't a horrible movie, but it doesn't even hold the candle to the book. It had decent characters and very good action scenes, but with a rushed storyline and overused clichés, it could have been better.

If kids like fantasy movies, then this is worth a DVD watch, but as for others, read the book.