Out of the Dark is a North American-Colombian-Spanish co- production with some moderately famous actors in order to make it more attractive for an international market. But in fact, it's an awful horror film made with a frustrating listlessness, hoping the beautiful natural settings and regional folklore to convince us we are watching something new-flanged, or at least, entertaining. Needless to say, it wasn't like that. The excessive number of clichés and bland characters are what mainly extinguish any tension the film could have generated, and induce to the boredom while we witness tedious supernatural manifestations such as dark silhouettes, ghostly prints and doors which are opened and closed by themselves. All that, of course, is accompanied by exaggerated musical stresses to simulate the fact that the story is advancing. The supernatural part of the screenplay includes the typical vindictive ghosts who want to rectify an offense from the past; and I don't think revealing that is a SPOILER, because it's shown to us during the first minutes in a prologue which already establishes the insipid tone of the film and the lameness of the "shocks" with which it pretends to horrify us. As for the actors, they do whatever they can in their badly written roles; they were obviously hired only for the poster to include some semi- famous names. On the other hand, I can't blame Julia Stiles, Scott Speedman and Stephen Rea for accepting a paid vacation in a beautiful Colombian region. In conclusion, Out of the Dark is a pathetic horror film and an authentic waste of time. The fact that this piece of junk was released on cinemas at my country truly made me angry. It's like the film industry has lost any interest in satisfying the audience. That's the only thing which scared me while I was watching Out of the Dark.

Having recently gone through a slew of paranormal movies (including THE RING, SINISTER, UNFRIENDED, ALWAYS WATCHING, and THE CONJURING) I heard about this film. So I shrugged and gave it a shot. Story-wise, it's pretty good. Not entirely original, but still eerie. The problem with OUT OF THE DARK is... just read on. THE STORY: An American couple, Sarah & Paul, (played by the wonderful Julia Stiles and a bland Scott Speedman) along with Hannah (Pixie Davies) their British-accented daughter(?) travel to Colombia. Once there, Sarah takes a job at her father's paper mill. As strangers in a foreign land, they soon learn of the odd customs that their neighbors have. And along the way, they learn about the shocking history surrounding the disappearance and death of several children. Before you know it, the family starts to see weird shadowy figures in bandages and have all sorts of paranormal events. Things get even worse when their own daughter gets kidnapped by these ghostly apparitions. And it's about then that everything starts to fall apart. Instead of doing the smart thing, like call the cops or even attempting to speak in Spanish, Sarah and Paul frantically barge and stomp around town, blabbering in English (which the locals obviously don't understand), until finally learning the truth behind the ghosts. Like I said already, it's a good story. But, the film needs to be ratcheted up in some way. Either there have to be more scares, or there's gotta be more of a sense of dread and doom. Honestly, if the film were more tightly edited, (maybe if the parents were written to be a little more effective) it would be a better movie. But as it is, you can take it or leave it.

Not scary (often boring) ghost movie about an American family in Colombia terrorized by local spooks mad at grandpa. Gramps is a businessman so, like every movie businessman ever, he's got blood on his hands. It's all pretty clichéd stuff and not the least bit unnerving or frightening. The jump scares didn't even make me twitch. My butt was asleep by the end of it. Speaking of the end, there's at least one bit that's unbelievably corny. If you have the guts to sit through this, you'll see what I'm referring to.Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman have both done better. They have no chemistry and their work here is forgettable. Pixie Davies plays the young daughter in constant danger. While she is certainly a cutie patootie, she's not a very good little actress. She has a heavy British accent while both of her parents are Americans. Even Stephen Rea, playing her grandpa, is using an American accent. I missed it when I watched but apparently there was a throwaway line of dialogue in the beginning that said the family had been living in London. Pretty flimsy but there you go. This was the first English-language film from this production company so perhaps it went unnoticed by everybody that Pixie couldn't change her accent until it was too late to recast. Or maybe they just didn't give a flip. It's not like it would have saved the movie or anything. It's a dud regardless.

Think of what you want most in the world.The good news is that it's probably going to be replaced by something more realistic when you get to around the 20 minute mark of this film. The bad news is it will feel just as unlikely to happen."Out of the Dark" is a mercilessly slow, plodding and derivative drama, not a horror/thriller as advertised. There is little to no action to speak of until the last few minutes and nothing to break up the laborious crawl towards the finale. The half decent twist towards the end will be wasted on the comatose audience.A pointless regurgitation of scenes and clichés filmed a million times before, in the form of a 20 minute story dragged out for three and a half hours. 2 marks for the film itself plus a bonus mark for the fact that it defied the odds and did actually end.