Writers: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause, Greg McLean
Director: Greg McLean
The Darkness starts with a family camping trip in the Grand Canyon. Peter (Kevin Bacon) and Bronny (Radha Mitchell) have a teenage daughter Stephanie (Lucy Fry) and a younger, autistic son Michael (David Mazouz). Michael discovers an old cave in which he finds some painted stones. Needless to say, he decides to take them home; needless to say, this is a Big Mistake. Back home Michael starts seeing an invisible ‘friend’ and bad things happen.
That’s probably all you need to know about the story. Despite introducing some references to local Anasazi mythology there’s nothing new in The Darkness. It’s all by-the-numbers stuff. The story plays out in a series of incidents interspersed with clumsy infodumps in the form of internet searches and a psychic introduced 20 minutes from the end. Needless to say all the family members have their own ‘issues’ which have no bearing on the plot.
Now I can live with an unoriginal story if it’s done well. But The Darkness lacks any tension or atmosphere. McClean relies on clumsy attempts at jump scares and associated musical crescendos. The result is loud and at times visually impressive but neither engrossing nor scary. He also waves the camera around just enough to be irritating.
I’m also uneasy about the use of an autistic character. Mazouz does a great job in the role and I’m in favour of autism being normalised in movies. Except that in this film Michael isn’t normal by any definition, he’s special in the sense of being psychically sensitive and the suggestion is that this is due to his autism. So is this normalisation or exploitation? I’m really not sure.
In terms of plot it really doesn’t matter. The story trudges on to a denouement as ridiculous as it is predictable, followed by a coda showing our troubled family back together as a happy unit. In fact the ending was one of a number of ways in which The Darkness reminded me of Pay The Ghost (2015); both waste a great acting talent in what is essentially a family melodrama with added supernatural cliches.
The Darkness isn’t a dreadful film, it’s just depressingly bland.