"The Darkness" -Movie Review

Over the course of cinematic history, we have seen a number of stories involving mythological spirits or entities that have come into our lives in order to bring us pain and chaos. Bagul in the “Sinister” series, the tooth fairies in “Don’t be afraid of the Dark”, The Boogeyman in “The Boogeyman”, and many more that have walked straight from our local urban legends on the silver screen. Newest in this tradition is the film from the minds of Greg Mclean, Shane Kraus, and Shayne Armstrong. Starring Kevin Bacon, fresh out of his TV show, “The Following”, “Silent Hill”’s Radha Mitchell, and “Gotham”’s David Mazouz, “The Darkness” has a deceptively interesting storyline that, like the contents of the story itself, holds a dark secret.

The story, as the writer’s and producer would like you to believe, is supposedly based on a true story. But, after some extensive digging, I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting a true origin story. What I did find was another of also-producer Greg Mclean’s movie from 2005 called “Wolf Creek” about backpackers being hunted and killed in the mountains. “Wolf Creek” also claimed to be based on a true story, but once again there is no evidence of one and critics claim the movie is badly written and executed (I have not personally seen the movie, but from what I have read I don’t feel inclined too).

The producer/co-writer’s spotty credentials aside, the story supposedly plays out as such:

Perfectly normal, happy family are on vacation to the Grand Canyon when autistic son, Michael, finds 5 strange stones with Native American origins and brings them home. Months later, the family dynamic has begun to deteriorate. Mom (Bronny Taylor played by Radha Mitchell) and Dad (Peter Taylor played by Kevin Bacon) are fighting as Peter has begun to ignore his family and their rough relationship past has become to surface between them. Sister Stephanie Taylor, portrayed by Lucy Fry, is having issues with her image and become bulimic, and her autistic brother’s odd behavior has begun to push her over the edge. Mikey has found a new supposedly imaginary friend, “Jenny”, and has begun acting weirder than normal. On top of all that other strange events are occurring around the house, the neighbor’s dog is incessantly barking, faucets turn on mysteriously, rancid smells, and strange thudding in the walls.

Throughout all the chaos being inserted into their lives, it is discovered that the 5 stones found by Mikey are bound to 5 spirits-turned-demons that were responsible for the destruction of the Anasazi tribe many decades ago. The 5 spirits, Wolf, Buffalo, Coyote, Snake, and Crow, reach into our world through children and accent people’s worst traits in order to tear them apart and then drag the children to their world. The Anasazi managed to bind the spirits to the stones and trap them in the cavern Mike found the stones in. Now that they have been released from the cavern, the only way they can be contained once again is for “the one with no fear” to put the stones back in the cavern. Of course, after a seemingly random encounter with an elderly Hispanic mystic and her exorcist daughter, young Mike turns out to be the one without fear and replaces the stones, putting the spirits away once again and allowing his family to heal and become whole again.

Now, when you put it all like that, it’s a good story, interesting concept, and if executed properly could make for a good B-rated horror at worst. Unfortunately, “The Darkness” is at best a C-rated horror movie, a good watch when you don’t care about the story’s shallow and piecemeal quality. What makes the whole thing even sadder is the cast they brought in for this movie. Kevin Bacon got his horror start 36 years ago with the original 1980 “Friday the 13^th”, and has been known for films such as “Tremors”, “The Invisible Man”, “X-men: First Class”, and “R.I.P.D.”. Radha started her career in 1989 in the TV show “Sugar & Spice”, and since has starred in movies like “Pitch Black”, “Silent Hill”, and “Man on Fire”. And while David Mazouz is the youngest of the cast, he has shown amazing talent through appearances on shows such as “Criminal Minds”, “Drop Dead Diva”, “The Office”, and most notably as Bruce Wayne in the currently running show, “Gotham”. Through his portrayal of autistic Michael Taylor, David managed to be the one redeeming quality of this movie.

Though having some all-star lead castings, it takes more than that to override bad scripts and incomplete story. It would seem that Greg Mclean and his team of writers borrowed massively from other horror genres and movies. It is so cliché in some places I could easily relate Bacon’s character, Peter Taylor, to Ethan Hawke’s Ellison Oswalt in horror masterpiece, “Sinister”.

Beyond the sketchy claim that the story was based on a true story, the overall concept of the Native American spirits is poorly developed and even more poorly handled throughout the movie. The stones that Michael takes from the cave go from being a crucial story mechanic to a nearly forgotten until needed simply to provide conflict resolution. And even then, the writer’s pull a cop-out by, instead of sending the characters all the way back to the Grand Canyon to return the stones, they open a portal inside Michael’s bedroom that leads right into the cavern.

Also, the “research” the mom and dad do on the Anasazi is overtly simplified and vague. The mother seems to have an uncanny gift for typing vague words into a search engine and getting immediately the results she needs. And all the information about the Anasazi and the spirits seems to be all conveniently located on one website and a random YouTube-esque internet video. And even after doing her research, which clearly tells her that the spirits are tied to 5 stones that need to be returned to their cavern, the mother ignores all she read and insists to her husband that it is the house that is having problems. And those 5 stones? Not once does she think to search the house for them in order to fix all their problems.

The spirits themselves are miss-handled throughout the movie. Though most of the spirits have fairly interesting costumes, Snake’s garb is non-descriptive and dull, and Coyote looks like a badly-made Papier-Mache pig’s mask than a fearful demon. Throughout the course of the movie the spirit’s actions rarely have a Native American feel to them. In fact, most of their actions could be easily mistaken for your everyday common poltergeist.

Adding to the obvious lack of research done by the writing team, the movie tries to culturally connect the Anasazi to the Hopi and specifically the Navajo tribes, to which they were neighbors but not related to in any way. And Theresa, the exorcist lady and her daughter who come to try to cleanse the house seem to know way too much for someone not descended from the Anasazi themselves. Not to mention that Theresa only speaks Spanish, a tongue not native to the Anasazi people. So how does she know so much about the spirits and their origins? They try to pass her off as just a mystic with experience in multiple cultures and entities by the little ritual kit she pulls out that has a number of religious symbols inside, presumably for dealing with different kinds of spirits. (On a side/personal note, I hate the part where Peter asks about the crucifix in her kit and her daughter replies with “She is sensing older things at work. And the god you may be familiar with? He cannot help you now.”)

More holes in the plot arise when looking at the progression of the family’s story and relationships. The writers attempted to show a multi-faceted family with a somewhat complex history that the spirits could prey on. Instead they managed to take the remains of a meeting with a family counselor and randomly shotgun them across the story. A blatant example is when they try to imply that the father, Peter, is going to have an affair with the new intern at his workplace. She is obviously interested in him, and his boss tries to push them together, but in the end he completely turns down her advances. The events leading up to that decision are not well scripted and don’t come across to the viewer well at all. The mother overhears a suspicious-sounding phone call between the father and an unknown other and tries to use that to garner distrust, but the phone call is one-sided and only manages to add a useless random scene to the movie. The portion of the call you hear, Peter’s side, feels completely out of place and out of context and it is never addressed later on in the movie. In fact, the fact he even had a prior affair that supposedly is causing all the mistrust now only gets mentioned in a barely noticeable comment near the end of the movie. Especially with how easily Peter puts aside the intern’s one-time advance, the whole issue of an affair just serves to clutter an already hard to follow story progression.

Speaking of a hard to follow story, one thing I realized and later confirmed through watching the movie and bonus deleted scenes and alternate ending, the movie was cut-and pasted. Most notably with a scene where Mike is locked in a bathroom and the rest of the family break in the door to find Native American paintings of the spirits in blood all over the walls and ceiling. The final cut of the movie has the scene happening in the family’s home, but the bonus features reveal the scene was actually intended as part of a larger scene at the hotel they flee too when things finally get to crazy at the house.

The piecemeal way the movie was filmed, not to mention the lack of time-markers either in the visuals or the subtitles, just adds to an overall lack of time progression for the entire movie. There is apparently a 2-3 month gap in between the family’s trip to the Grand Canyon and when the hauntings really start to kick in. There is no obvious sign of the time passing except a barely-caught comment from the mother. Later, the sister is attacked by a dog and bitten rather nastily on her right arm. It shows the wound twice immediately after the attack, then shows her at the hospital with a bloody towel over it. After that the camera doesn’t even show you a clear shot of her right arm until much later, and when it does her arm is clean and bare of even the scarring that would have been left from her attack. Besides the fact of no scarring, it seems the physical consequences of her attack are completely ignored or forgotten the rest of the movie. Time itself, it seems, or at least the clear passage of it, is never clear and mostly forgotten about.

Finally, I want to mention the alternate ending. There is so much wrong with this, besides just the absolute hypocrisy in the fact that a movie “based on a true story” can even have an alternate ending.

The alternate ending progresses as such:

After the exorcism, Theresa and her daughter drive away frantically after Theresa exclaims vaguely that something worse is coming and she knows someone who can help.

Cut now to the mother waking up and discovering a picture of them at the Grand Canyon that was on the wall in the hallway is now on the floor with all their faces burned out. She looks up to see a grey wolf walk by down the hall. She heads the direction the wolf did and ends up in Michael’s room where he is sitting on the floor looking at the blackened wall he had set fire to earlier in the film. She sits down and starts to ask him about the 3 stones he has arranged on the floor in front of him (the Wolf and Buffalo stone are strangely missing). She asks him about the “Sky People” (a term most commonly found among the Hopi tribes, not Anasazi). She asks him then where the Sky People are, and is told “they are behind you”, at which point the shadowy figures of the spirits appear behind her, terrifying her into action. (up until now this all mirrors a dream sequence she had earlier in the movie. It is unclear if, within the context of the alternate ending, the original dream was still valid and a flash-forward to these moments, or if it was re-purposed to make the alternate ending)  She grabs the stones, shoves them into Michael’s backpack and rouses the family to get on the road. They drive to a cliff overlooking the ocean and she hurls the backpack and the 3 stones inside out into the water. As she and her husband celebrate what they think is finally the end to all this with an embrace, in the car Mikey reveals he still has the Wolf stone on him. As the sister looks on in horror, the Wolf rises from the trunk area of the SUV and attacks them violently. The vehicle is thrown forward, hitting the parents and throwing them over the side of the cliff before crashing into the waters far below. The vehicle makes it to the bottom before the scene ends and goes to a somewhat tranquil shot of the Wolf stone washed up on a beach with the backpack a few yards down the beach from it.

This alternate ending just goes to show what I have been saying all along. I find it hard to believe the phrase “based on a true story” and the term “alternate ending” can really be used to refer to the same movie and still hold true. Also, due to the choppy method to scene filming and unclear progression of time in the movie, it is hard to see how this “alternate ending” really clicks into place with the rest of the film.

All-in-all, “The Darkness” is aptly named due to the fact that is where the movie keeps the viewer most of the time. There are more discrepancies I haven’t mentioned, but at this point I really don’t think I need too. If you like mindless, nonsensical, less-than B-rate horror than this movie is great for you. And honestly, from a product that supposedly came from “The Producers of “The Purge” and “Insidious”,” I expected something a little more in-depth and intelligent. I truly am disappointed with the turn-out of a movie and story that held such promise. I am sorry to say that I cannot in good faith recommend “The Darkness” for your viewing pleasure.

This is Joshua Shipman,
Signing Off!