Darkness Falls Movie Review:


Ever wondered what happened to those teeth that you used to place under your pillow when you were a kid? Were they really taken by the "Tooth Fairy"?

As adults we know what really happens but in the sleepy town of Darkness Falls, a tooth fairy really does exist. Young Kyle Walsh even saw her one night and that almost cost him his life. But the light saved him. His mother wasn’t so lucky.

Flash forward twelve odd years and poor Kyle (Chaney Kley of Legally Blonde) has been ridiculed and bullied all his life about his Tooth Fairy claims. He has left Darkness Falls and tried to forget his life there but constantly on alert for the fairy. It takes a call from his childhood sweetheart Caitlin Greene (Emma Caulfield of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who asks him to come back and help her baby brother with his horrific night terrors. If Kyle is to resume his relationship with Caitlin, he has to face his greatest fear. The question is, is the fairy ready?

Darkness Falls plays a lot like a "Friday the 13th" or "Nightmare on Elm Street". It is riddled with corny dialogue and jumpy scare scenes. The horror and fear, if there is any in this film, is in the sound and sound effects editing. If it wasn’t for that mastery this film would have been one of the corniest horror movies on record.

I was quite disappointed that even with Stan Winston’s genius the creature wasn’t at all impressive but almost as mundane as a black sheet on a wire. The final scene and the creature’s back story was all rudimentary and felt overtly contrived.

We need smarter and solider horror films are what we need. If one thing the horror series of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street taught us was that we need horror movies but you need to challenge a smarter audience each time.

With a running time less than 90 minutes I guess the filmmakers didn’t want to stick around very long. Now I can see why.

(2 out of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

Hoping to catch the same audience that engulf last
fall's horror hit The Ring (2002), Columbia pictures
now releases the B horror film Darkness Falls into
theaters. Though the film has good things in it, it
is still not a good movie. What does work for the
film is that its director uses a lot of tricks to keep
the thrills going. The director also obviously knows
the genre material he is working with and he doesn't
attempt to insult audiences by taking this horror
project too seriously.

Though shot in the country of Australia, the setting
of the film is in the fictional Maine town called
Darkness Falls. Over 150 years ago, there lived a
well-respected lady called Matilda Dixon, who would give children a gold coin for every tooth that they lost. She ultimately became known as the "Tooth Fairy". After surviving a fire in which she was left badly scarred, she became secluded in her own home. After two children disappeared, the town blamed Dixon for murdering them, she was them sentenced to death. Before she was hung, the 'Tooth Fairy" placed a curse on the town. The following day, the two children arouse out of hiding as a hoax without a scratch on them.

The film then moves 12 years before present day,
where the main character has an encounter with the
ghost of the Matilda Dixon. She comes for children's tooth under their pillows, but she also terrorizes them and will kill anyone who looks her in the face. There is only one protection against her, which is to stay in the light and away from the dark. So get your flashlights ready. Flash forward to now present day, the main character, Kyle (Kley) returns to Darkness Falls from Las Vegas to the aid of his old girlfriend Caitlin (Caulfield). Caitlin's little brother, Michael (Cormie) has just lost his last tooth and has been recently seeing the "Tooth Fairy". With everyone believing that he is crazy, Kyle must find a way to prove to Caitlin that what Michael is seeing is true. The three are also faced with how to stop the angered ghost before she kills them all.

Director Jonathan Liebesman uses about every trick in the B-horror movie book in this film. His style and
quick cuts is what makes this film watchable, even
though you quickly realize that the overall movie
isn't that good. The key to Liebesman keeping the
audience interested is not so much the quick glimpses of the "Tooth Fairy", but the instantaneous sound that I found to be a force. Everytime the ghost arrives, you can hear her snarling and breathing, it is sometimes too loud, but also pretty creepy. Like said earlier, I believe Liebesman knows the B-horror genre
and he takes full advantage of this with the
production. Liebesman doesn't try to make the film
smart, when he knows that it isn't.

The writing by John Fasano, James Vanderbilt, and Joe Harris is full of continuos chase sequences and bad dialogue. Of course there are holes, like with every B-movie, but the opening narration explains what you need to know about the "Tooth Fairy" in a few frames rather than trying to figure out her motive later. The script also contains many dumb jump-out-moments that want to get the attention of the audience during parts of the film that are slow. An example of one is a cat jumping out across a car for no apparent reason
at all.

The acting cast is virtually a group of unknowns. As
Kyle, Chaney Kley shows decent range and I can see him getting a few roles in the future. Emma Caulfield is modest with her role as Kyle's old girlfriend Caitlin. Young Lee Cormie shows a lot of wide-eyed emotions and fears as Michael, who connects with Kyle on their similar fears.

Darkness Falls is one of those B-horror movies that
you know is bad, but you still watch it. The concept
of having a ghost that can't be in the light and the
character's having to use flashlights as their weapons works to an extent. The choice seems to have been taken from other similar horror films like Pitch Black (2000). Thrills are apparent in the film over its stupidity and bad writing. At the Darkness Falls official movie website, you can watch the first ten minutes online, which in my opinion is the best part of the movie.

Report Card Grade: C-

Joseph Tucker

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Darkness Falls and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.