I watched the movie on Amazon Prime (Germany) on a Saturday afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not the scariest horror movie - and, if you watch a lot of horror movies, you might even say it is not scary at all. You will have the usual scares: noices, shadows, objects moving by themselves, etc. BUT: The story behind these is different than usually! And it has a lot of great and well-known actors. If you are into TV shows, be sure not to miss the little scenes with Jennifer Morrison ("Once Upon a Time") and Ming-Na Wen ("Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."). There's also Paul Reiser very convincingly playing a very annoying character. Kevin Bacon is a great lead and David Mazouz as Michael Taylor might be the creepiest part of the whole movie. Watch it! -- But don't necessarily compare it to movies like "The Conjuring" and its franchise or "Insidious". It's not a James Wan movie.

Every character in this film is unlikable. the movie doesn't set up a pemise other than spooky scooby doo rocks, and jumps straight into a "scary" movie about a over reacting daughter and a creepy and slightly annoying boy with autism, although I have no beef with the condition itself, just how the actor is in the film. and all around never will like this film.

Funnily enough I didn't mind it being a bit mimical of Poltergeist, or even The Manitou. The acting was crisp enough, and I like the idea that instead of the wholesome family under siege, this one was dysfunctional, with each one fighting their own demons (rather than the supernatural ones). This movie brimmed with ideas.The problem, I thought, with this movie is its pacing. I thought that the first half of the movie was unnecessarily long and tended to drag out the suspense until there really wasn't any suspense left. This meant that their was little time to get into the heart of the characters and their individual flaws, let alone the medium who appears too much near the end of the film.I felt that whilst this movie borrowed a lot from Poltergeist, it went to too many lengths trying not to be Poltergeist, and as a result the project suffered.A pity really because this movie had all the elements of being a great movie, but squandered it on timing. Elementary mistake.

A family of four, including an autistic boy, takes a trip to the Grand Canyon and the boy falls into a cave that contains five stones that keep five ancient demons at bay. The boy picks up the stones, puts them in his backpack, and joins the family and everybody goes home and weird things start to happen.Strange noises, putrid smells, wild animals appearing suddenly, handprints…things escalate rapidly and the boy is blamed; but the parents wonder maybe there are ghosts, but maybe it's just the boy and he is becoming dangerous, then again maybe there are spirits, but the boy is acting funny and started a fire and almost burned down the house…the family can't seem to make up its mind on what to do with the autistic son. So he stays in the house and more weird but violent things happen. The daughter knows there is something supernatural going on; the mom (played by Radha Mitchell) finally catches on and does research on the internet about paranormal stuff; and the dad (played by Kevin Bacon)…ha ha, good luck trying to convince him there are evil spooks in his house.Oh, somewhere in the 2nd act, the daughter is revealed to be bulimic; Mitchell falls off the wagon and resumes her drinking problem; and Bacon is revealed to have cheated on his wife in the past and he has to deal with a hot assistant who is tempting him — all subplots that are completely unnecessary and makes the movie wander around and lose focus. I believe the writer and director were trying to convey how the family was falling apart because of the influence of the evil spirits; but these things could have easily been cut out and made the story leaner and tighter with a better pace.Back to the focus of "The Darkness": the five demons are slowly using the boy to create a pathway for them to enter our world and destroy it. Why? Um, it's not mentioned, so I have to assume that they are just being demons. Bacon and Mitchell must find a way to figure out what is going on and how to stop the evil from getting through, or else the world is doomed.My most memorable, movie moment of "The Darkness" is the scene when the portal opens up fully and instead of the spirits coming out, the autistic son goes in and the spirits are taking him deeper into the cave where the stones were originally hidden. Huh? What? Aren't the spirits supposed to enter our world and destroy it? So why are they retreating further into the cave where they have been trapped for hundreds of years? Maybe I missed something but I don't think so. It just doesn't add up."The Darkness" is well acted, well directed, has a decent plot, and provides a few scares that are mostly cheap. From a technical point of view, it is mostly competent, the way a base model Honda Civic is competent at its job…but no way in hell does a Civic give you the same excitement and joy and fear as driving a Lamborghini Aventador will. Understand? Mannysmemorablemoviemoments