Let’s get one thing straight: when a movie calls itself Darkness, it’s setting a pretty high bar. You expect something menacing, something oppressive, something that makes you fear turning off your nightlight. Instead, Jaume Balagueró’s Darkness gives us…a two-hour advertisement for Spanish electricians. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, Gee, I wish I could watch Anna Paquin stomp around a house flipping breakers while her dad has seizures, congratulations—your oddly specific prayer has been answered.
The Premise: The Brady Bunch Meets Satan
The film opens with a flashback to the early 1960s, when an occult ritual goes wrong, and six children vanish. It’s the kind of cold open that should set the tone for a chilling supernatural tale. Instead, it feels like a rejected History Channel dramatization, the kind you’d stumble across while flipping channels at 2 a.m.
Fast forward forty years. An American family moves into a suspiciously cheap Spanish country house. Dad Mark (Iain Glen) has Huntington’s disease, Mom Maria (Lena Olin) is in denial about everything, teenage daughter Regina (Anna Paquin) has the permanent scowl of someone forced to attend a family reunion, and little Paul (Stephan Enquist) is just there to be traumatized. Within minutes of moving in, the house develops electrical problems, Mark develops violent mood swings, and the audience develops an overwhelming sense of regret.
The Horror: Power Outages and Parenting Fails
Here’s the thing about supernatural horror: it works when the weird stuff is scarier than real life. In Darkness, the weird stuff never competes with the sheer horror of watching a family ignore obvious red flags. The house is haunted? Nah, let’s stay. Dad’s lashing out because of neurological decline? Nah, let’s just keep pretending he’s fine. The kid says there are ghosts in his room? Better dim the lights and see what happens.
The scariest element isn’t the apparitions of ghost children—it’s the parenting. Honestly, Social Services should’ve shown up halfway through this movie and ended it early.
The Cult: The World’s Most Inefficient Satanists
Regina eventually learns that the house was built for a Satanic ritual requiring the sacrifice of seven children by “hands that love them.” Which is a poetic way of saying, “This cult had way too much time on its hands.” They failed last time because Grandpa Albert (Giancarlo Giannini) couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice his son Mark. Which is understandable—murdering your own kid is a big ask, even for Satan.
But here’s the kicker: instead of finding a new location or rewriting the ritual, the cult decides to wait forty years for another eclipse and manipulate the same family line. That’s right, their big evil plan is less “diabolical genius” and more “glacially-paced HOA committee.”
The Acting: Everyone Needs a Nap
Anna Paquin, fresh off her X-Men fame, does her best, but mostly she just looks annoyed. Maybe because she realized mid-shoot that her entire role consists of shouting “Dad!” and running around with a flashlight. Lena Olin tries to inject some dignity into the role of Maria, but it’s hard to emote when your big climactic moment involves failing a DIY tracheotomy.
Iain Glen—who later found redemption on Game of Thrones—spends most of the film twitching, screaming, and choking on pills. It’s like watching a Shakespearean actor forced to star in a haunted WebMD simulation.
Giancarlo Giannini as Grandpa Albert at least looks like he’s having fun. He gets to monologue about Satan and betray his family, which is more than most of the cast can say.
The Horror Aesthetic: Poe, Lovecraft, or Just Lazy Lighting?
Some scholars have compared Darkness to Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Which is like comparing a microwaved Hot Pocket to fine dining. Sure, both involve heat, but only one leaves you with third-degree burns and regret.
Yes, the film leans heavily on atmosphere—long shadows, flickering bulbs, endless scenes of people squinting into the dark. But atmosphere without payoff is just boredom in mood lighting. By the third blackout, you’re less terrified and more wondering if the house just needs new fuses.
The “Twist”: Hands That Love Him
The grand reveal is that Mark, the dad, is the intended sacrifice all along. Not the kid, not the girl—nope, Dad’s the chosen one. Which could’ve been compelling if it wasn’t delivered like a last-minute retcon. The cult didn’t get him the first time, so now his daughter has to “accidentally” complete the ritual by trying to save him.
In practice, this means we get a scene where Regina tries to perform an emergency tracheotomy but can’t finish because the demons hide the pen tube. It’s the kind of climax that makes you long for the subtle artistry of Final Destination.
The Ending: Darkness Wins, Audience Loses
By the finale, the “darkness” manifests as creepy doppelgängers, Maria gets killed, and Regina and Paul are tricked into a car with a fake Carlos. The movie ends in a tunnel, implying eternal doom. It’s supposed to be chilling, but by that point, you’re mostly rooting for the darkness to take everyone just so the credits will roll.
The message of the movie seems to be: “You can’t fight darkness.” Which is deep and all, but in execution, it feels more like: “You can’t fight boredom.”
The Real Horror: Editing and Distribution
Let’s not forget that Darkness was released in the U.S. two years after its Spanish debut—on Christmas Day, no less—in a butchered PG-13 cut. Nothing says “holiday cheer” like dragging your family to watch Anna Paquin bicker in the dark. Dimension Films clearly had no faith in the movie and treated it accordingly.
The irony? Despite universal critical panning, it made $34.4 million worldwide. Which proves that audiences will apparently pay for anything if you slap Anna Paquin’s name on the poster and release it on a holiday.
Final Thoughts: Flick Off the Lights
Darkness wanted to be a brooding Gothic tale about family, trauma, and evil lurking in the shadows. What we got instead was 102 minutes of flickering lamps, mumbling cultists, and characters so unlikable you wish the ghosts would hurry up and finish the job.
It’s not scary. It’s not suspenseful. It’s barely coherent. If anything, it’s the perfect horror film for insomniacs—it’ll knock you right out.
