The Dark Review

"THE DARK" reviews

Movie

THE DARK

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-04-07 15:31:27

Provider

Review

Supernatural films involving dead or missing children are all obliged to live in the shadow of Don't Look Now, Nicolas Roeg's memorable 1973 tale. Predictably, The Dark is not quite in that league, though, much like its forerunner, it involves a child, presumed drowned, and a scarred couple trying to find some purpose to their lives.

In Fawcett's film the child, Sarah, played by Sophie Stuckey, is swept out to sea in Wales, where her New York mother Adelle (Maria Bello) has gone to see her estranged husband, James (Sean Bean). While James leads the search for Sarah's body, Adelle is haunted by visions of her daughter, who appears to be trapped inside the house in which they're staying.

Sarah learns of a place called The Dark – a land of the dead that's a distorted image of the real world – and becomes convinced that Sarah is attempting to communicate to her from this universe, particularly when she finds a girl called Ebrill (Abigail Stone) in her bed. Unlike James, who's convinced that she's a mere runaway, Sarah believes that the sacrifice of Ebrill will return their daughter to them. Her suspicions are granted credibility when local farmer and handyman Daffyd (Maurice Roeves) recognises Ebrill as the reincarnation of a young girl who died 60 years before.

For the first two-thirds of its duration, then, The Dark is a tense, intriguing affair. But when Sarah is informed of mass suicides, prompting her, ultimately, to jump her into the ocean in a desperate bid to reclaim her daughter's life, the earlier tension gives way to mass hysteria, stripping Fawcett's horror flick of its potency.