Filipe Neto This is another excuse for a movie with haunted houses, a theme more than recurring in horror. So common that the emptiness of new ideas creates movies like this. The whole story is set in my neighboring country, Spain (effective, the film is Spanish such as his director/writer, Jaume Balagueró) and revolves around an American family who went to live there. Unfortunately, the family story and the relationships between the characters are never interested in the plot, which focuses only on the house. But even this brings no novelty, merely reconstructing the usual formulas of horror that every horror lover has seen countless times and countless ways. Thus, the film becomes predictable and uninteresting. I even guessed how it would end. Even so, it manages to create a sufficiently tense environment to provoke some scares. I simply hoped for something more. Lena Olin and Giancarlo Giannini were the actors that I liked the most, as their performance was regular, lacking behind them better material and a more competent director. The rest cast did not call my attention for the positive.

GL84 Moving with her family to Spain, a teen and her family believe the series of weird occurrences there are the result of the ghosts of children killed in the house for a deadly ceremony and must prevent it from happening again to her family.Overall this one turned out enjoyable if slightly flawed. This one really manages to work quite well at building a pretty noteworthy atmosphere here by really going for a subdued approach to the haunting found within here, which range from the innocent to the subtle. While initially starting with the innocent fare of the discovery of the pictures and the drawings, or the subtle versions of ideas from the father's freak-outs and behavior around the family, the constantly flickering lights and the obsession over the beings under his bed all might seem like non-entities there's a great build-up throughout the first half which sets up the latter half of this one nicely. That gives the second half much more to work with as the investigation into the original traumatic incident and the ghostly visions of the children around the house manage to really ramp up the action and pacing even more for the finale. There are some good times here as this section features the battle to get the father under control during one of his freak-outs while setting up the chilling walk-through of the house in complete darkness while surrounded by the ghosts and their temptation tricks that make this one quite fun. Even as much good as this becomes, this section here really highlights the flaws present in the film. Among the biggest here is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of action here, as the film is decidedly against the supernatural to prove the point of its haunting back-story. This one here is instead more like a drama by focusing on the idea that something's happening rather than do anything about it which simply makes this one go by without anything of any real interest throughout here. Not only is this section not filled with action but it's also part of the really low-key and dragging pace that doesn't offer up a whole lot of energy that doesn't move the plot along any better. These here are quite problematic here as they give this quite a dull pace without much of a true horror film here to start this one off which makes this problematic. The other real flaw to this one here is the utterly haphazard finale, not only filled with wretched editing during the action scenes but filled with cliché moments and action here that feels pretty common and not that original which really makes for some troubling times here in this section. These here are the film's biggest issues that hold it down.Rated PG-13: Violence, minor Language and themes of child abuse.

airsnob This has no gore ( since when did gore become horror) this has no fake boobs or babies being tortured. What this movie has is genius as far as I'm concerned. I haven't been scared to walk to the bathroom after a movie in decades. This movie did that. For two days. It's a smart ghost story, creepy, chilling and I just wanted go her the Heck out of my living room the entire time it was on. Much like a car accident , I couldn't stop. The plot; nothing spectacular there. It held up. The real meat and potatoes of this film are in atmosphere and direction. Goes to show how valuable a great Director is. The way it was filmed reminded me of one of my nightmares. It's like watching a nightmare on TV. For some reason, kids these days have turned into some real sadistic freaks. I haven't looked, but I'm willing to bet " I Spit on your Grave" , " Hostel" and " Saw" have better ratings than this gem. People want to watch the most gruesome things known to mankind and they call that horror and slap it with a 10. Because of how repulsive it was. On a human level. Ya, those people ( who I personally think have sadistic tendencies of their own) won't like this movie. Smart people will.

Dalbert Pringle Boy-oh-boy, I'm tellin' ya, this "uncensored" version of Darkness was certainly mighty tame by today's super-gruesome standards of horrific horror films.And, not only was its gore-level almost at the point of being anemic (which was truly unforgivable) - But, the effect of its overall scare-factor never once came close to scoring a frighteningly legitimate bull's-eye. Never.At times I thought that Darkness was, indeed, coming close to hitting its intended mark, but, then, it inexplicably held back at that crucial point of achieving its desired goal. And, so, Darkness failed to satisfactorily deliver the horrific goods.And, on top of that major disappointment, this film's story about a happy-go-lucky family who move into a house that holds within its walls an unspeakably terrifying secret, covered no new ground, whatsoever.Yep. You can bet that we've all certainly seen, in one way or another, this one's all too familiar and predictably prepackaged story umpteen bloody times.Mind you, Darkness did manage (at times) to create an atmosphere of tension-filled dread that actually held my attention to some degree.But, its mounting suspense that led up to its final, climatic "twist" lost tons of steam when a minor key-character in the story was put in the unfavorable position of having to explain (at verbatim) everything covering a long, 40-year stretch of time. This explanation conveniently tied up all of the loose ends (leading up to this frenzied moment) and even threw a solar eclipse into the mix, for good measure.Anyways - I figure that a lot of this film's significant downfalls can be attributed to its rating of being suitable for those viewers 14 years and older.So, with that in mind, any out-and-out horror, and gore, is certainly going to be carefully held in check so as not to totally gross-out, or corrupt, those dear, impressionable, prepubescent minds of the younger generation.