OMM2024 - Night 11: Darkness Falls (2003)

 I was donating platelets today and had a couple hours to kill, so why not take in a movie? Night 11 of the #OctoberMovieMarathon

Darkness Falls (2003)

5/10

Matilda was an old woman would would trade a gold coin for lost baby teeth, but gets disfigured in a fire. Unable to stand the light, she only comes out at night. When 2 children disappear, Matilda is blamed and the town hangs her. She curses the town: "What I took before in kindness, I will take forever in revenge". The next day, the missing children are found and the incident is buried and forgotten.

100 years later, when a child loses their last baby tooth, she appears. Kyle peeked as a child and lost his mother as a result. He is called back to his hometown when his friend's kid brother starts to say he sees her too.

 

I like the idea of this movie. I was scared of the dark as a kid, so I wanted to see how you would bring that fear into a story with adult characters. I love the shot in the beginning where child Kyle is hiding in the bright white bathroom and the camera slowly moves out to show the dark hallway and this... creepy ghostly figure above the doorway. Half-floating and half-clinging to the wall- it's evocative! And I like the idea of an unfair death haunting a town until the once righteous urge for justice twists into a sick sense of revenge on those who don't deserve it.

 

Sadly, nothing else is really that great about this movie. It's honestly, a bit of a let down. If they had gone harder on the execution of light and dark this could have been neat. Overall, just a meh movie, and not even bad enough to really hate watch.

SPOILERS START AFTER THE POSTER!

SPOILERS START HERE!

I think a lot of my problems stem from the story itself and the fact that technically, the story doesn't treat it's light/dark motif well. This review might be a bit wordy...

We get an opening monologue describing Matilda and her curse on the town before cutting to our main character Kyle. He's losing his last baby tooth (so probably a preteen in middle school). That night, he wakes up and catches a glimpse of Matilda. While he tries to escape he finds that if he's in light she cannot get to him. Sadly, his mother goes into his dark room to show him that no one is there and Matilda kills her. Kyle is blamed for his mother's death and is sent into foster care. The police chief is surprisingly cold to him considering the town is labeled a "small town". (Usually, cold police are for cities in movies)

At this point, there's a lot of opportunities. And with the scene with the bathroom/ghost looking cool I had hopes for this movie pulling off it's concept. It would be a technical challenge to be able to communicate the creature in the darkness and the characters needing to be in shafts of light while still allowing the audience to be able to see what you need them to see. This awesome type of shot is sadly, not repeated.

12 years later, Kyle gets a call from his childhood crush Caitlin- who's little brother is so afraid of the dark he won't sleep more than 10 minutes and claims "she" is coming to kill him. Kyle does return and faces a lot of flack from the people in the town who think he murdered his mother.

We now have Kyle, who's maybe 25 at this point. Caitlin, who's Kyle's age, has a little brother (Michael) who's... maybe 10? I'm totally fine with a large age gap between siblings, but Caitlin and Michael are at the hospital dealing with intense treatments. There is no mention of the parents at all. Where is Michael's parents? Why is his sister dealing with this? It almost feels like they wanted Kyle to come back to deal with the Tooth Fairy going after the next generation- but didn't want Caitlin to have a kid by someone else. After all, in the beginning of the film, Kyle and Caitlin are just starting to be an item- about to go to their first boy-girl dance together. And the way Caitlin acts to Michael is much closer to a mother than a sibling. All this could have been solved with a line about the parents being dead or something, but we don't get that. It's just Caitlin making the medical decisions for her brother and the parents just... aren't there.

And this leads me to the other part of the movie that bugged me. Kyle is shown to be taking lots of medications for depression, anxiety, and psychosis. And it's hinted that Michael is on the same path, since the doctor's are treating him the same way. But everyone is so... mean. Kyle reluctantly goes to a bar and is almost immediately physically attacked by a guy who thinks Kyle murdered his own mother. And I don't understand why this man is so upset by it. Is he just angry that murder happens? The way it happens it feels more like school bullying than anger at the justice system or something. It's weird and seems to only be there to excuse that guy's later death at the hand of the Tooth Fairy. Who I guess is after Kyle again now that he's back in town. And there's an interrogation scene where the chief of police pulls out Kyle's pills and says something to the effect of "you take anti-psychotics because you might become psychotic?" Which I'm sure is a real thing that happens to people which is just gross and rude and terrible.

While writing this, I looked at the Wikipedia article for this movie, and apparently there was a plan to have Kyle be more suspicious as a killer and the Tooth Fairy more of a twist reveal. I think that would have helped with how harsh the townspeople are to Kyle. Because from the audience's perspective, everyone is being really mean to someone who's mother was just killed in front of him!

 And poor Michael is not given any comfort at all. At the end of the movie, the doctor suggests they put him in a sensory depravation chamber to "prove there's nothing in the dark"? I guess the idea being he'll face his fears and then be fine afterwards. But this seems like more harm than good because they also think Michael is causing the scratches he gets himself? So they have to strap him to a table?? And this is supposed to make him calm down??? It's much closer to the "cures" 1900s sanitariums had, which seem more like torture than something that would actually help.

Don't worry, Kyle ends up saving everyone and the Tooth Fairy is killed. The climax is not very exciting and felt like going through the motions. By the end of the movie I just didn't care anymore. I couldn't root for anyone. Kyle was boring, the townspeople were all horrible and mean, Caitlin and Michael were just kinda there... even the ghost doesn't get to do anything fun after the opening.

But the worst part is they had this concept of the creature only being in the dark- and the light being safe. But then we get weird moments where people get attacked instantly the moment they're in the dark one minute and being in the dark for awhile but being fine. And the ghost started off going after people who've seen her? But then she just starts killing anyone in the dark at all? There could have been a lot of interesting shots showing people in the light/dark and crossing that line. There is one moment where the ghost starts to reach and gets burned as soon as it's fingertips hit the light. But that's only one scene.

A frustrating movie, but nothing super duper bad. But skippable for sure.