A few words regarding "Darkness Falls" (SPOILERS!)

We (the Mrs. and I) decided it might be a good idea to watch Darknes Falls on PPV last night.

The movie opens with a voiceover expounding the history prior to the film’s timeline. Evedantly, there was a nice old woman who liked to play “tooth fairy” with the neighborhood children. They bring her a tooth, she gives them a gold coin (US 356.70 /Troy ounce). Naturally, we are never told where she gets these coins, and what she does with the teeth, but right away I’m struck by the notion that if I had the opportunity to get a gold coin for every tooth I could produce, I’d be a little less carefull during baseball practice.

Anyhoo, the voiceover goes on to explain how her house burned down one day and she became ultra sensitive to light so she had to wear a porceline mask to protect her face from sunlight.

The voice continues to explain that one day two children went missing, and so rather than wait literally overnight for them to come home the next morning, the townsfolk went and had them a a good ol’ fashioned tooth fairy lynchin’ Too bad she gave so much gold to the children, or she could be using it to buy her way outta this mess right now…

Anyway, with this incredibly ludicrous bistory now explained, the movie is now free to jump right into the story of how the “tooth fairy” now comes to get your last baby tooth when it falls out, and that if you look at her when she shows up, you get killed.

So for the next 1 hour and 15 minutes or so, we are treated to dark scenes featuring a cgi banshee wailing in the dark while people point flashlights nervously around themselves.

Eventually, she gets killed by the spotlight from a lighthouse (because she was light sensitive due to the fire, remember?) and everyone lives happily ever after or some crap like that.

As I was watching this film, one burning question was in the back of my mind: why is she after the children whom she loved, rather than the parents who lynched her? Additionally, if all children run the risk of death when their last baby tooth falls out (and who’s NOT going to look at the wailing shadow lady that just came into your room?) why are children still present in town? Surely, most rational parents would have heard something about the serial killer of children and hit the road, right?

Things I have learned from this movie:
Police can be tricked into shooting out all the lights around them even after they have seen proof that it is the lights that protect them.
A cop can be frightened into shooting whatever is making a noise in the dark (while inside) prior to identifying what it was (a dog)
Wall-mounted rechargable emergency lights simply go from full-bright to off when the batteries die, with no warning whatsoever.
Ghosts who have light sensitivity cannot stand artificial light, direct sunlight, or fire, but are fine when it comes to moonlight or lightning.
If you tell someone going to a dark place during a power outage to take a flashlight, they almost certainly will not.
Flashlights in “Darkness Falls” are equipped with battery-saving technology which shuts them off without warning.
In towns where light-fearing, children-killing ghosts are present, the electricity grid is poor at best, providing brownouts and power outages during the night and even the simplest of storms.

Yep. Just rented it this weekend. Sucked. Sucked Ass. I feel your pain brother…

It could have been a great movie. All it needed was a decent script, a less-than-ludicrous premise, a capable cast, an effects team with a clue, and a director without a glue-huffing habit.

I resent the wear-and-tear on my retinas caused by the light from this stinker bouncing off of them. It was pitiful enough that, in context, a lighthouse in which the emergency generator is both in a state of disrepair and bereft of fuel seemed par-for-the-course.

Yeah, this sounds like a junkball from what I’ve heard, too. The MOST ludicrous part may be that a friend of mine thinks this is actually where the story of the Tooth Fairy came from. She seems to think that only the bit about the “coming back to haunt people” is fiction, but that the rest of it (nice woman, burned, lynched, people fear revenge) is real. Next time she says this, I may lose it big-time.

I feel I must leap to the defence of this film as the director is South African. Note I haven’t seen the film but you’re all wrong, wrong, wrong!!!

The beggining was actually kinda cool and scary for a bad horror flick. Then it just disintegrated before my own eyes.