Product Details

• Actors: Sean Bean, Maria Bello, Sophie Stuckey, Abigail Stone, Maurice Roëves
• Directors: John Fawcett
• Writers: Simon Maginn, Stephen Massicotte
• Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Paul Tamasy, Paul W.S. Anderson, Robert How, Robert Kulzer
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
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• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: April 11, 2006
• Run Time: 93 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000ECXWW2
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,683 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Art House & International > By Country > Denmark

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Dark is as mysterious as it is horrific, making it refreshingly eerie compared to the current wave of lackluster horror films. Dark's protagonist, Ada (Maria Bello), a heroically sly mother who aims to bring her allegedly dead daughter back to life, further clarifies director John Fawcett's affinity for femme fatales, best exemplified in his juicy feminist werewolf film, Ginger Snaps. This time mining the indestructible psychic mother-daughter bond for material, Fawcett tells the story of Ada, who brings daughter, Sarah, to Wales for a visit with husband and father, James (Sean Bean), an artist relocated to a remote seaside haunt. After Sarah becomes obsessed by a monolith carved with cryptic text about Annwyn, the pagan Welsh equivalent of purgatory, Ada predicts her daughter's fall off a cliff in a nearby pasture. Search parties fail to locate the girl's body, so Ada heads to the local library for research, discovering that the house they live in is inhabited by the ghost of Sarah's doppelganger, Ebrill, who seeks rebirth after a similar drowning accident. Ada makes the ultimate sacrifice to rescue her daughter while Sarah's father stands idly by. Dark's plot directly relates to the classic psychological thriller, Don't Look Now, but lacks the same subtle visual beauty, instead opting for a modern primitive look. But with Welsh mythology mixed in, not to mention subplots involving a psychotic shepherd into trepanation, and a local sheep population afflicted with a suicide-inducing virus, Dark contains appealing medieval imagery, and its contemporary take on pagan self-sacrifice is sick and cultish rather than sexy and natural, as in The Wicker Man. Dark can at least be applauded for entering some intriguingly creepy territory. --Trinie Dalton

Product Description
Believing her daughter is being held prisoner in the land of the dead a distraught mother attempts to enter the gates of hell in a desperate attempt to rescue her child. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 01/27/2009 Starring: Mario Bello Sean Bean Run time: 93 minutes Rating: R

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cool and creepy -- intriguing images, gripping story, only gets a bit hokey towards the end, October 25, 2007

By	Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a very creepy horror film that deserves comparison with some of the best of the non-exploitation and non-slasher scary flicks like The Others. The approach of the film, especially to begin with, resembles that of classics like Don't Look Now, or Picnic at Hanging Rock -- above all, the strangeness of the circumstances and the fear they invoke mirror the psychological turmoil of the characters -- and, as with those films, the hints at a deeper supernatural mystery are nicely balanced with the growing anxiety of the characters. That is true, at least, until the latter quarter of the film when it gives in to the supernatural and to the twists and turns of more mainstream scary fare and begins to seem more like, say, The Skeleton Key. Maria Bello gives her usual strong performance and, while he has less to do, Sean Bean is convincing as a distraught and loving father and estranged husband. The real star of the film, though, is the cinematographer and crew: the colors of the Welch coast are both beautiful and evocative of a deep and mythical past; the anxiety of the characters and the power of the ocean when they are looking for a drowning girl is captured by the frantic, but not shaky, movements of the camera; the look of "the dark" (you'll know it when you see it), is both subtle and believable. A worthwhile and intriguing film, that has unfortunately not received the attention it clearly deserves.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dark Side Of Welsh Mythology, May 6, 2007

By	Stephen B. O'Blenis (Nova Scotia, Canada) - See all my reviews

That "The Dark" is largely unknown on this continent is a shame, because this is a movie that could have and should have enjoyed a vastly larger audience, and brought more mainstream viewers over into horror, without watering the film down to '97-style 'horror-lite'. The tagline is 'One Of The Living For One Of The Dead', referring to an old part of Welsh folklore where a death on this side could sometimes bring back someone from Anwyth, the afterlife in ancient Welsh beliefs. The family in "The Dark" consists of two parents who recently broke up (Sean Bean and Maria Bello) and their twelve-ish daugther Sarah, who lives with the mother in America while her father has relocated to his native Wales. During a mother-and-daughter trip to see the father, a terrible accident happens and Sarah is washed into the ocean. Not knowing if she's alive or dead, an extensive search is organized drawing on pretty well everyone from the nearby village. And as the search is ongoing, strange things start to appear and to happen, and the supernatural elements enter.

"The Dark" is well acted - with a standout performance from the perrennially under-rated Sean Bean -, well made with realistic effects and high production values, has an upper-level musical score, and is all played out against the magnificent vista of Wales's green fields, high rocky cliffs, and mighty crashing waves, the beauty of all of which can turn very threatening under the right conditions. With a powerful emotional punch on top of all that, this one's highly recommended.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Dark, April 17, 2006

By	Emily R. Jarrell "emma34" (Newport News, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was amazed to see the 2 and a half overall rating this movie got here, when I reviewed it. It deserved more than that. This movie has a dream cast Maria Bello and Sean Bean, and the locale was stunning. Adele(Bello) is trying desperately to hang on to the idea that she can resurrect her daughter (from a drowning), and is determined to follow some folklore she discovers. Her husband tries his best to dissuade her from this obsession, but far too late for she is well on her way by this time. The movie creeped me out, I watched it late at night, and was pretty tired, but it had a sense of impending doom that made it really work.