The tale of a not-so-scary Tooth Fairy
January 30, 2003
Darkness Falls is set in a small town in Maine where a version of the Tooth Fairy has been trumped up for 75 minutes of poorly planned thrills and chills.
Like many European fairy tales and legends, the original story involves a lot more gory details than we would tell today's small children. Darkness Falls takes a few of those details and creates a simple horror story that follows only two rules: the villain is invincible until the last scene, and the heroes receive not a moment's rest until said last scene.
The agile villain could actually be quite fun and exciting under different circumstances, but the filmmakers here only seem to care about manipulating audience members into grabbing a neighbor's forearm every 7 minutes and 32 seconds (give or take)--damning the concept of a coherent plot.
Starring Chaney Kley, (a Hollywood newcomer,) and Emma Caulfield, (TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer,) the film's slasher/special effects plot suggests that the movie is attempting to appeal to Caulfield's regular viewers, but Darkness Falls lacks even the most basic level of charm, thoughtfulness, and irony, (not to mention the competent bit of action-adventure,) that gives some decency to other thrillers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Hollywood's aptitude for producing mindless action-adventure movies is well documented, but Darkness Falls stumbles even there. The action is generally indecipherable, and audiences are left to follow a hero who spends most of his time predicting the actions of the villain and warning people about the dangers of losing light bulbs.
Lucky for the film's protagonist, people suddenly begin to believe his Tooth Fairy story at one point and he gets to end the audience's misery by disposing with the villain in an all too easy manner.
Why is it so easy? Because the movie is over, of course.
Comments
Post a comment
You are not currently logged in. You must log in using your Facebook account to post a comment. It's fast, easy, and we don't store any of your personal information, except your first and last name when you post a comment.
Why?
Our old comment system was abused to leave racist, sexist, fradulent, or simply useless comments. We're hoping this verification step will improve the quality of our comments.
I don't have a Facebook account. I'd like to verify my identity using my MySpace/Google/Yahoo!/OpenID/SSN/주민등록번호/MasterCard.
Let us know. We're open to suggestions. Over the next few weeks, we'll be testing other authentication methods.
The FBI/CIA/TSA/CoS/Emmert is out to get me! I need to stay anonymous!
We're working on a way to allow this. If you have any ideas, email us.
I think this website is ugly.
It's going to be a work in progress all summer, so it may look and act differently from week to week. If you want to influence this process, email us. We read every email, and respond to most of them.