Darkness

Year of release : 2002

 

Run time : 1h43min

 

Genre : Horror / Mystery

 

Cast : Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen

 

 

The movie opens with a boy who is found by the police after he escaped a horror house.

40 years later, an American family moves into a house outside the city limits in Spain.

 

The teenage daughter,Regina, doesn't like it,as it's her last year of high school,and wants to spend it in the states with her friends.

The little boy seems to be afraid of his own room,and the dark,as his father insists he keeps the lights off. He keeps on drawing kids with their neck cut, while the dark eats his pencils,as he puts it.

 

A few weeks after they move in, weird things start to happen in the house, as the news keep on talking about an eclipse.

 

While waiting in traffic one day, the father has a seizure, and we find out Huntington's disease,a condition he had 10 years prior, has made a comeback.

 

The boy keeps on getting new bruises on his neck, worrying his sister, while the mother seems completely unfazed, like she's in a different world,where everything is just peachy!

All the while, there's a dark figure watching the house.

 

Doing research,as her father's condition keeps getting worse, hearing voices, thinking members of the family told him things they didn't(this is explained at the end), Regina, finds out from the man watching the place ,their house is actually a satanic temple where 6 children went missing 40 years before,during an eclipse.

 

All the while, the father has moments of madness in which we see played the child's escape from the beginning,which makes him the boy who escaped,moments which trigger his disease. Which makes one think ,if the condition he has is due to what happened to him as a child!

His father, who is a doctor tells the wife she might have to help him if he swallows his tongue! This is important at the end of the movie.

 

As the father's condition keeps getting worse, the house seems to have a life of its own,with lights going off, stains appearing on the ceiling, characters disappearing from scary pictures, children appearing in the dark rooms,watching, while the moody weather keeps on pouring.

 

The movie unravels during the course of a week.

 

This is one of my favorite movies. It has a good plot, with action which slowly progresses,tension that slowly builds in the house and among characters. The plot is entertaining, it keeps you interested in what is happening and why.

It makes you wonder,if the father's mood has anything to do with how he is, the condition he has,or it's the house doing this to him,taking over him,in a way,like with the character in The Amityville Horror,George.

The mother seems in a world of her own, like a sedated person, or maybe a Stockholm Syndrome victim. She brushes everything off,what happens in the house,to her family,her son,who is continuously bruised up,she trusts her husband's father completely(whom we find out,is not to be trusted,as he's the one doing this to them in the first place!), like she refuses to see the truth.

 

The acting was good, Iain Glen was the best. Anna Paquin who got an Oscar when she was a kid, seemed to have been the only one who wasn't giving 100%, looking a bit awkward.

 

The visual effects were good, especially for 2002.

 

The soundtrack was Ok.

 

You can watch the full movie for free,here,if you have a VPN as I noticed it doesn't play in certain countries without it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1us84bAJpj8&ab_channel=IndoOverseasFilms

 

Rating : It's so money !