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.

Darkness (2002): Dir: Jaume Balaguero / Cast: Anna Panquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen, Giancarlo Giannini, Fele Martinez: Dreadful piece of dirt that should only be seen from behind the darkness of closed eye lids. Stupid concept where morons enter a haunted house and strange things occur all the while they are too ignorant to leave. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. A boy's colored pencils ominously roll away on him. The father of the house goes into vicious spells. It is all very lame and about as scary as an episode of Fraggle Rock. Director Jaume Balaguero makes the drama aspects look corny but the thriller elements didn't exactly add up either. Acting is dreadful although Anna Panquin is a capable young talent. She plays the daughter who is the only one who senses that something is wrong. Something is very much wrong in that her career led to this travesty. It is also sad to see Lena Olin brought down by such flat material. She plays Panquin's mother in denial. Iain Glen plays Olin's husband who has a history of abuse. Giancarlo Giannini is also featured in a supporting role but this film will likely provide only darkness to anyone's career. Although production is fine, the rest of the film is a disaster. It offers nothing that hasn't been xeroxed countless times. There is no reason to see this junk unless one has the urge to spend ten bucks to catch up on a couple hours of sleep. Score: 1 / 10

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.

This is not a perfect movie but it's by no means awful or "sucky" as a few reviewers have so eloquently suggested. There is a lot here to like. Fantastic cinematography, good direction (for the most part), interesting story line (or at least it starts off interesting) and some great acting, especially from Anna Paquin. For the first half I was really engrossed and enjoying the film and thinking this would be one of my higher scoring reviews but then something happened and I disconnected from it. I remember thinking well this movie is really well done and I feel all the tension and suspense etc but something isn't quite right. And I'm still not 100% sure what that something is.Part of the problem was the last half of the movie seemed to be a bit of a mess. At times it seemed badly edited, disjointed and rushed. I couldn't understand half of what was being said, which is a shame because there were some not very entertaining but important plot explanations buried in that muddy audio. I have to agree with others here that the ending, at least in the cut version, is a hard to follow and rather abrupt and anti-climactic. The bit where the scene keeps switching between Reggie/Grandfather, Mom & kid, Dad, bloke with the cane etc.... were just too jumbled and very difficult to work out what was going on. At that point the film slid into "silly" when before that it had been sophisticated and convincing. The father character seemed to become too over the top to the point of ridiculous. The mother's complete disconnect from her family was a bit hard to come at too even from the start. Maybe there was a backstory to her bizarre behaviour. I think it might have helped to have developed her character a bit more. Even showing her at her workplace to give her some context. (where did she work anyway??) Anna & the kid brother actor tried valiantly enough but it really couldn't pull itself back together in the final stages. I have since learnt that I watched the "cut" version which might explain why I found the last section of the movie so difficult to follow and erratic.Despite these issues, this movie is still a cut above the usual horror fare being regurgitated ad nauseum out there. There is almost no real violence and no gore at all but it's very creepy & suspenseful helped by a good but subtle music score. (An aside: I had to laugh at one negative review (rant) on here that complained about the ONE scene that had a bit of blood in it because they "don't like movies with blood in them" and then claimed to be an authority on what makes a great horror movie because they are "a huge horror movie fan" *snort*).If you like movies where it's more about the build up of suspense and dread, a chilling atmosphere and tension-building through good direction this movie is well worth watching even tho it employs some standard techniques. If you like lots of action, violence, shocks and bloody gore look elsewhere. :) Hope this review helps you make up your mind about whether to watch it. For my part, I think this is a badly under-rated flick that could have been much better but is a great improvement over most of the average offerings in this genre.