Darkness Falls Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)January 24th, 2003
DARKNESS FALLS
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Kyle (Chaney Kley) has been considered nuts ever since he insisted the Tooth Fairy, and not himself, killed his mother when he was young. Legend has it that the vengeful spirit visits children when their last baby tooth falls out and kills those who dare to look at her. When Kyle's childhood girlfriend Caitlin (Emma Caulfield, TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") is faced with a little brother hospitalized over his desperate fear of the dark, she hunts down Kyle to help Michael (Lee Cormie). Kyle returns and once again must face his fears in his hometown of "Darkness Falls."
This is a silly amalgamation of (better) horror films we've seen before that's not the least bit scary. We know we're in for a slice of cheese when the film opens with a low rent Blair Witch type fable narrated over a montage of rippling old Victorian photographs. Darkness Falls has spent over a century under the curse of an evil spirit that kills children, but the police seem to never have connected the dots and the townspeople never seem to have heard about a victim other than Kyle.
After we learn that the denizens of Darkness Falls hung an elderly woman with a history of kindness to children when two of them got lost one day, we see the events which placed Kyle in a mental institution. Things are immediately off-kilter when we're expected to accept that a preteen Kyle would be preparing to go to bed while his girlfriend Caitlin climbs in his window asking if he wants to go swimming at the local quarry. For someone who makes herself at home, Caitlin seems never to have been in Kyle's room before.
Once Kyle's mother has been slain by the Tooth Fairy, who makes dreadful noises and flits about like a witch on a broom wearing a porcelain mask, we jump forward to Caitlin and Michael's plight. Both Kyle and Michael have been drawing pictures of the same eerie vision, just like the people who saw the Mothman in a film that had the sense not to show us its monster so often. Kyle's presence brings on the Tooth Fairy and he's locked up again on suspicion of murder when people start getting killed, but he escapes after she takes out most of the police station in the midst of a well-timed power outage. Kyle makes it to the hospital just in time to keep Michael's doctors from putting him in a sensory deprivation chamber, a medical version of 'let the baby scream itself to sleep.'
Neophyte director Jonathan Liebesman tries to dredge up chills with loud noises and those unexpected black cats that jump out of total darkness. He does inspire actor Kley to say 'Stay in the light' about 568 times, all with conviction, but Cormie seems to have been directed to speak in a babyish voice which becomes irritating. Screenwriters John Fasano and Joe Harris meld
the "Blair Witch" with "Pitch Black" with the independent inspiration of neither. Cinematographer Dan Lausten ("Brotherhood of the Wolf") keeps the action visible in challenging lighting situations, including Stan Winston's ("Jurassic Park") Tooth Fairy, who ostensibly cannot enter the light.
"Darkness Falls" is a competently made, if not very effective, horror yarn. For a really scary Tooth Fairy, try Tom Noonan in Michael Mann's "Manhunter."
C
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