Watch Darkness For Free

People are voting emotionally.

Overrated and overhyped

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is another excuse for a movie with haunted houses, a theme more than recurring in horror. So common that the emptiness of new ideas creates movies like this. The whole story is set in my neighboring country, Spain (effective, the film is Spanish such as his director/writer, Jaume Balagueró) and revolves around an American family who went to live there. Unfortunately, the family story and the relationships between the characters are never interested in the plot, which focuses only on the house. But even this brings no novelty, merely reconstructing the usual formulas of horror that every horror lover has seen countless times and countless ways. Thus, the film becomes predictable and uninteresting. I even guessed how it would end. Even so, it manages to create a sufficiently tense environment to provoke some scares. I simply hoped for something more. Lena Olin and Giancarlo Giannini were the actors that I liked the most, as their performance was regular, lacking behind them better material and a more competent director. The rest cast did not call my attention for the positive.

Boy-oh-boy, I'm tellin' ya, this "uncensored" version of Darkness was certainly mighty tame by today's super-gruesome standards of horrific horror films.And, not only was its gore-level almost at the point of being anemic (which was truly unforgivable) - But, the effect of its overall scare-factor never once came close to scoring a frighteningly legitimate bull's-eye. Never.At times I thought that Darkness was, indeed, coming close to hitting its intended mark, but, then, it inexplicably held back at that crucial point of achieving its desired goal. And, so, Darkness failed to satisfactorily deliver the horrific goods.And, on top of that major disappointment, this film's story about a happy-go-lucky family who move into a house that holds within its walls an unspeakably terrifying secret, covered no new ground, whatsoever.Yep. You can bet that we've all certainly seen, in one way or another, this one's all too familiar and predictably prepackaged story umpteen bloody times.Mind you, Darkness did manage (at times) to create an atmosphere of tension-filled dread that actually held my attention to some degree.But, its mounting suspense that led up to its final, climatic "twist" lost tons of steam when a minor key-character in the story was put in the unfavorable position of having to explain (at verbatim) everything covering a long, 40-year stretch of time. This explanation conveniently tied up all of the loose ends (leading up to this frenzied moment) and even threw a solar eclipse into the mix, for good measure.Anyways - I figure that a lot of this film's significant downfalls can be attributed to its rating of being suitable for those viewers 14 years and older.So, with that in mind, any out-and-out horror, and gore, is certainly going to be carefully held in check so as not to totally gross-out, or corrupt, those dear, impressionable, prepubescent minds of the younger generation.

All I can say is I'm glad I watched this for free on iPlayer, as the rain prevented me from going out in the garden and doing something productive, like picking up dog faeces, for example. This is labelled as a horror film, and it has all the requisite ingredients: haunted house, dysfunctional family, satanic rituals etc. But the only truly creepy thing about this film was the way the camera lingered a little-too hungrily on a barely-adolescent Anna Paquin who, throughout most of the film was dressed either in a swimming costume, or a t-shirt at least 2 sizes too small for her. I am surprised I made it to the end of this film before turning to something more interesting like scrubbing the bathroom floor, but I like to give things a chance. I'm afraid I was sorely disappointed. You'll probably like this film if you're easily scared by cheap jump shots, the occasional loud noise, and you suspend disbelief enough to ignore the plot holes, shocking acting, and the unpleasant semi-pederast themes.

There are times while watching this that it reminds me of a Spanish take on Hellraiser, or something with a similar feel. It has atmosphere to burn and decent performances. It probably got buried upon release under a number of similar feeling films, but this one stood above. The threat is kept vague through most of it, and there are some great moments that really put you on the edge of your seat. Specifically the running from the lights as they go off and cast the tunnel into darkness. This technique has been used since in movies such as Vanishing on 7th Street and a dream sequence in The Descent, but it was done best here. Check this out, you should enjoy it.