Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Chaney Kley, Emma Caulfield, Lee Cormie, Joshua Anderson
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
DARKNESS FALLS is a strange mixture of what seems to be a slightly less than medium sized budget picture, a lousy and totally implausible storyline, good directing, good actors but the shallowest characters imaginable to work with, good special effects, one good song that plays over the closing credits which look like they should be opening titles and an Australian supporting cast with American accents.
What we have here is an evil tooth fairy that tears you to pieces if you open your eyes when she collects your milk teeth – unless you stay in the light. Caitlin ‘Cat’ Greene (Emma Caulfield) sends for Kyle (Chaney Kley) one of the tooth fairy’s previous targets when her young brother is virtually pronounced crazy because he believes the tooth fairy is after him. Cat’s fiance objects because of the attraction that exists between Cat and Kyle due to an old love between them even though they haven’t had any contact since they were twelve years old. Kyle tries to help out but he gets rejected by the locals who all hate him as well as still being a target for the tooth fairy. Everyone knows the town of Darkness Falls’ legend but chooses to ignore it even though there are numerous and unusual murders there.
The rest is Kyle, Cat and co trying to evade the tooth fairy.
The movie picks up because the locals finally believe Kyle when they also come under attack and the on screen action gets a chance to open up. The story though stays as awful as ever but the director knows how to make the audience jump and uses just about every trick in the cinematic book to do so – often with success. This is backed up by good special effects but let down again by the characters that have no substance and are difficult to care about. So what if they get knocked off, you hardly even told me who they are! This is not the actors’ fault because they clearly do their best and Emma Caulfield as everyone will know who watches her as Anya in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is perfectly capable of developing an interesting and entertaining character providing she is given a decent writer. Incidentally Chaney Kley who plays Kyle has appeared in a BUFFY episode called ‘Real Me’ but don’t be fooled because DARKNESS FALLS isn’t a patch on the excellent BUFFY.
In conclusion DARKNESS FALLS is a crap movie that somehow manages to entertain because it does a couple of things well but it also irritates mainly because of such a bad story and no character development. Worryingly I got the feeling that someone somewhere wants to make this into a Jason/Freddie type franchise. Watch it but when nothing better is on.
