PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/28/04)

Apparently, none of the characters in Darkness have seen The Shining. You want to call out to them, “Watch out for those two little girls who keep appearing! Don’t write the same thing over and over! And put down that hatchet!”

This is the perfect haunted house movie for someone who’s never seen a haunted house movie. Beyond that, the whole thing is cut like a trailer, so you might not want to have seen too many of those either. Let’s face it. Unless you’re having this review read to you by your mother tucking you in for the night, you’ve already seen this one.

We’re in a part of Spain where, lucky for us, no one speaks Spanish. An uninteresting American family (who seem more like four actors that just met) moves to a deserted mansion. The first owners left a creepy portrait of themselves lying around. They were apparently identical triplets who might have been the models for the farmer with the pitchfork in the painting American Gothic. Oh yeah, they also look to have been drag queens and had a thing for killing kids. That penchant may be passed on to one of the new owners, presumably the one who shoves his face through holes he chops into doorways with an ax. Check out the ‘farmers’ in the trailer online. And don’t forget—you can see them in slo-mo!

The cast is not very directed by Jaume Balaguero. But the real star of Darkness is flash cutting. Balaguero seems to think that if he keeps showing us spooky looking things for tiny fractions of seconds, we’ll wilt. It’s like seeing those animatronic skeletons pop up next to your boat as ‘lightning’ flashes in an amusement park ride. It’s just that scary.

—Kevin Allison