The Darkness is a new and utterly relentlessly terrible, trite, boring, unintentionally funny, cliche-ridden horror film that came out this weekend that no one should see. Because you’ve seen it before, even if you don’t watch a lot of horror movies. There’s a house, it has ghosts, they fuck around with the family, they bring in ethnic spiritualists to cleans the home, wash, rinse, repeat.
In this one, the average white family visits the Grand Canyon and the unconvincingly autistic son falls into a burial chamber of an ancient Anasazi culture and steals their ritual stones. Those stones (representing Fox, Buffalo, Snake, Coyote, and, I dunno, Rabbit season) house the evil spirits the Anasazi kept in check (says the inexplicably staticy YouTube video the parents watch to inform the audience what kind of spooks are haunting them).
The dad is played poorly by a bored Kevin Bacon, the wife is poorly played by Rahda Mitchel, the autistic boy is terrible, and the overly moody teen is so moody her performance is laughable.
Nothing scary happens in this movie unless you think ancient evil American Indian spirits turning on your water and maybe running up your bills is scary. OK, fine, a dog attacks the moody teenage girl, lights turn off mysteriously, and the little boy in a hospital waiting room watches scenes of atomic bomb blowing apart houses on tv… because I guess the evil ancient Anasazi spirits control the broadcasts at the local hospital. I dunno.
No one should see this movie. I was more scared when Greg fell of the surf board after the Brady kids stole that Hawaiian idol.
Score: 55