Customer Reviews

Darkness Falls [VHS]

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(31)
2 star:		(45)
1 star:		(70)

 

 

Everyone thinks Darkness Falls sucks, giving it 2 or less stars. But come on people! It's not that scary, but it's spooky. It makes you kind of paranoid if you just watched it at night. It's quickly become my favorite horror movie, and it's unfair that people won't give it a chance. The actors and actresses are the best of the best, and it definately is worth seeing and buying. Don't listen to the pessimists. It's better than I thought!

As a young boy, Kyle Walsh saw something no one is supposed to see...and live. Less fortunate was Kyle's mother, murdered in a night of raving terror from which Kyle has never recovered even twelve years later. Now he's coming home to Darkness Falls, to confront his childhood fear, and save his beloved Caitlin and her younger brother from a nightmarish doom...

Though it got off to a good start at the box office in 2003, DARKNESS FALLS quickly floundered and is not widely appreciated by many horror fans. Despite its decidedly mixed reviews from fans and critics alike, DARKNESS FALLS won me over the first time I saw it and it continues to entertain today.

Exploring both humanity's general fear of the dark as well as the theme of childhood trauma that can shape one's life forever, DARKNESS FALLS is a fast-moving supernatural thriller that scores high marks for an original concept, interesting monster, empathetic characters, and atmospheric suspense. Chaney Kley captures all of Kyle's angst and obsessiveness perfectly, and Emma Caulfield is appealing as Kyle's childhood sweetheart Caitlin, caught up in a nightmare from which she cannot awake. Children in peril are often a bust in scary movies, but Lee Cormie is excellent in his role as the benighted Michael and provides a highly believable catalyst to bring Kyle and Caitlin back together. The monster is scary and realistic, another knockout job from Stan Winston Studio, and turning the Tooth Fairy legend on its darkside makes for an ingenious and decidedly wicked new bogeyman.

One reason DARKNESS FALLS disappointed at the box office is that it is, after all, a PG-13 film in a genre in which a very hard "R" rating is par for the course. Lacking the splattering gore of many horror films, as well as the gratuitous nudity, DARKNESS FALLS perhaps came across as too "tame" for some. Director Jonathan Liebesman took a lot of the blame, but unnecessarily so, as the look, feel, and pacing of DARKNESS FALLS are all excellent. Often compared to the more popular THE RING, DARKNESS FALLS is clearly a very different movie, sharing with its rival only the theme of a haunted child.

Though mine may be a minority opinion, I consider DARKNESS FALLS to be perhaps the best horror movie since the remake of THE MUMMY in the 90s. Relying more on creativity for its shocks than the normal blood & guts, DARKNESS FALLS succeeds at least in part because it doesn't give in to certain genre conventions. If you're looking for something different in a scary movie, give DARKNESS FALLS a try--I don't think you'll be disappointed.

DARKNESS FALLS is, in my opinion, one of the scariest, most original horror films in years and it will end up becoming one of my guilty peasurres. It is perfet to watch on a dark and stormy night and you won't want to stay in complete darkness anymore. See it, it's very good and do not believe the criticts. they're just rating it badly because they are all comparing it to THE RING, and even though this was excellent, it is no match for THE RING.

Kyle Walsh (Chaney Kley) spent nine years in an asylum for the murder of his mother in the small coastal town of Darkness Falls, when he was just a boy. He swears he didn't do it - that the real culprit was the "Tooth Fairy," a local ghost-witch/boogeyman, who takes childrens' last baby teeth but relentlessly pursues them to death if they are so presumptuous as to steal a peek at her disfigured visage. Now an adult, Kyle can't get through a single night without a flashlight, because the Tooth Fairy can't strike in anything but darkness.

Kyle's old childhood flame, Caitlin Greene (Emma Caulfield), tracks down Kyle and solicits his return to Darkness Falls to help her kid brother, Michael (Lee Cormie), who - like Kyle - suffers from insomnia due to night-terrors. Neither she, nor her lawyer fiancee Larry (Grant Piro) believe in Kyle's "Tooth Fairy" - nor do the local constabulary, when another body turns up in Kyle's vicinity. But their skepticism diminishes, when the Tooth Fairy becomes more aggressive in her pursuit of Kyle and Michael, soon threatening the entire town of Darkness Falls.

This movie is short on logic, but long on scares. It's an old-fashioned horror film of famous last words - "See? There was nothing there!" - which are invariably the cue for the Tooth Fairy to swoop down out of the shadows at lightning speed, thence to abduct her victims to isolated locations for murder and mayhem.

Director Jonathan Liebesman makes the most of light and shadows, and of a great, unsettling soundtrack that underlies the entire proceedings. Experienced monster-maker Stan Winston provides the genuinely grisly and unsettling Tooth Fairy, almost scarier in her featureless Gray-alien ghost mask than in her later-revealed grotesquely fire-scarred visage. The production is gorgeous, and the cast are really terrific - especially principals Kley and Caulfield (the latter fresh from her role as Anya in the popular series Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Lee Cormie as the earnestly intense suffering little boy. The imagery is nightmarishly unsettling, and highly memorable.

The whole thing comes in at just 75 minutes, making it one hell of a fast and furious ride. Don't question it. Just jump on, and hold tight. It's a perfect popcorn movie: meant for quick consumption, not at all thought-provoking, and intended for thrills only.

Bring a date. Believe me, she'll be grabbing onto you like you were Brad Pitt.

The DVD cover hypes it as even scarier than The Ring, but never believe the hype. The fact is that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to make horror films if it ever knew how, and what passes for horror is really just a special category of action film, with supernatural entities substituting for the terrorist, drug lord, and white slaver villains who infest the pure action genre.

Darkness Falls begins in a conventionally Stephen King-ish way. The protagonist, an early teen who has just lost his last tooth, receives a visit from his local tooth fairy, who is not in the habit of leaving money under the pillow. But she bungles the job, killing his mother instead and landing him in an institution, blamed for her death. Twelve years later he returns, drawn back by a plea from his former girlfriend to help her younger brother, who is next on the tooth fariy's hit list. No, don't ask what she has been doing all those years in between.

Soon after this conventionally Stephen King-ish beginning, the movie begins to fall apart in a conventionally Hollywood-ish way. The tooth fairy goes ballistic for some reason and, possibly to make up for lost time, starts killing everyone in sight. Well, not "in sight" exactly; she can't stand the light, so they have to be in the dark in order for her to get them. At this point the movie cycles through the usual chase scenes through a dark empty building, an SUV careening along a country road, and culminates in a conventional shootout at the OK Lighthouse.

Shunned by many critics and worthless to some audiences, I found Darkness Falls to be entertaining and at the same time very engrossing and well done. Director Jonathan Liebesman did a fine job of putting together this film. The actors, Chaney Kley and Emma Caulfield, did a great job acting out their parts in this film and accomplished in making them believeable. The Tooth Fairy's story and past was well described in the beginning of the film and her appearences were something to look forward to throughout the entire film.

The DVD is also very well done. The picture is extremely clear and fully detailed. The sound is nice and pleasing to the ear. The special features are also good. They include: filmmakers commentaries, The Legend of Matilda Dixon, The Making of Darkness Falls, deleted scenes, storyboard comparisons, widescreen and fullscreen presentations, and more. Over this DVD is well done and well thought out. This film is rated PG-13 for terror and horror images, and brief language. It is approximately 86 minutes long.

(REVIEW CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS:SCROLL DOWN FOR REVIEW)

As a young boy, Kyle puts his last tooth under his pillow and is told by his friend not to peek at the tooth fairy. Awaking from a nightmare, he jumps up and sees shadows moving across the wall. When he pulls the covers down he sees a face covered with a porcelin mask and he runs into the bathroom. His mother then comes out of her bedroom to see what the noise is about. As she ventures into her sons room when the son is begging her not to, she sees nothing wrong. Then sees is attacked by the figure and the boy runs and jumps into the tub to hide. That morning the police come and take Kyle away.
Now over twelve years later, Kyle has left the town that never believed him. He also left behind the one person who truly believed him, his childhood girlfriend Caitlin. With evil emerging in Darkness Falls again, Kyle must return to battle the creature that ruined his childhood so many years ago.

This film is surely worth a rental, but you must decide if you want to buy or not because not everyone will enjoy this film.
Hollywood

In "Darkness Falls" the monster in the dark that is coming to get you is the tooth fairy. What you basically have here is a cross between the wrong person being killed a long time ago from "The Blair Witch Project," the creature that only comes out under certain circumstances from the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, and the white mask from the "Halloween" movies. Now, what made the first Freddy Kreuger movie work was that there were these clear cut rules that actually came into play with the climax of the film. But in "Darkness Falls" the rules really do not explain what is happening on screen and the gross violations kill any momentum that the story might be generating.

Because the town lynched an innocent woman she takes her revenge by coming after kids when they lose the last of their baby teeth. But she only comes after you if you take a peek and look at her when she comes at night, because otherwise the town of Darkness Falls would have nothing but pre-teens and adults who moved into town. At the beginning of the film she comes for young Kyle Walsh (Joshua Anderson) who had just lost his last tooth, but gets his mother instead. Kyle is institutionalized because it is assumed that he killed his mother, despite the lack of forensic evidence to support the idea, but also because he is now afraid of the dark. But little Caitlin Greene (Emily Browning) believes in Kyle and their paths cross several years later.

Now the problem is Michael (Lee Cormie), the young brother of Caitlin (Emma Caulfield), who can only sleep for about ten minutes at a time because he has been totally afraid of the dark for three weeks. Nobody thinks to just let the kid sleep with the lights on when he drops off from sheer exhaustion or to just knock him out with tranquilizers. Instead, Caitlin brings Kyle (Chaney Kley) back to the hometown where everybody thinks he murdered his mom to help. Kley's performance as the hero is pretty good for this particular genre, although Caulfield is not given anything substantive to do, which is a shame since you know the primary reason I checked out this 2003 film was that it had a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" cast member in it.

But once the lights start going out "Darkness Falls" starts to fail, big time. This is a film that offers no suspense (if the lights go out, the tooth fairy shows up) and no gore (she takes her victims away into the darkness, or, more accurately, the darker part of the darkness, otherwise we would never see anything). Then we get to the big finale and the rules go out the lighthouse window. Director Jonathan Liebesman is certainly competent, but the screenplay by John Fasano, James Vanderbilt, and Joseph Harris just presents too many problems with the story that there is nothing that can be done by the director or the actors to save this one in the end.

Wow...there's a whole lotta hatin' goin' on in THIS place, I see...

Well, while the majority of you are sharpening your pitchforks and lighting your torches, I'll take advantage of the opportunity to put MY two cents in on this little flick.

I loved this movie. I thought the concept was good (I mean, why do we assume the tooth fairy looks like Tinkerbell and is just inherently friendly? Why is it tough to believe that there may be a darker legend behind her like there is in most fairy tales? Why is it easy to accept an undead revenant with a hockey mask haunts a summer camp, but not the idea that there is a supernatural being that must conform to a set of celestial rules?), and the cinematography was positively chilling (the scene near the beginning in the hallway outside the safety of the bright bathroom is the stuff of Lovecraftian nightmares).

Preying on our inherent fear of the dark was a masterstroke...and I've read the complaints about how light was her downfall, but lightning didn't bother her...well, why do we swallow that in some vampire movies crosses ward away the villains, but in others they can use them as toothpicks?

Add to that element the use of the tooth fairy, as aforementioned a friendly and "safe" element of almost all of our childhoods, weaving her legends of how you must be asleep and never see her into something sinister, and you have a very scary movie.

I look at any horror film in the respect of 'does it scare me? Does it touch some psychological button that, in my suspension of disbelief that I carry into watching ANY film, takes me back to my childhood, lying there in the darkness, seeing the shadows from the streetlight and wondering just what those little noises were that you always hear in a quiet house?'...it seems that most of the reviewers here rely on what is shown on the screen being solely responsible for making you afraid...and to an extent, I believe that also, but in my opinion if a film has an element that reaches into you and finds that one spot to place a cold hand and remind you that just maybe there's more out there in the dark than you know about, then it's done it's job.

Like any movie, Darkness Falls has it's flaws...but it found that child in the dark that's still somewhere in me...maybe if any of you readers out there still keep that same child somewhere in your psyche, you'll enjoy this movie as much as I did.

I thought the movie was good, it wasn't very scary but it was different than what you are used to. I think it was intelligent,and more of a paranormal type movie than complete horror. I liked it when I saw it.

don't get me wrong I love the idea of the tooth fairy but it needs work, it also needs to be longer. I gave it 5 stars because of artistic direction of the design of the tooth fairy. Just blows my mind and makes me wish I made it up. I saw this movie when I was little and it scared the hell out of me! You don't have to take my word for it, just watch the movie and choose for yourself.