User reviews

A secret society called the Faith is battling evil. Lilith is Adam's first wife who considered herself an equal. She was banished from Eden and turned into a demon by God. Anders Raeborne injects himself with Darklight and turns into a near-indestructible demon. Elle (Shiri Appleby) is a woman with no memories attacked by the demon. William Shaw (Richard Burgi) recruits her revealing that she is actually Lilith under the control of the Faith. He trains her to use her demonic powers for good while trying to deal with her evil past.

As a concept, I really like trying to make the Biblical Lilith into a dark superhero. There is great potential but this is a fail. This was a Sci-Fi TV movie. I don't know if it was meant to be a TV pilot and it certainly fails as that in many aspects. As a simple TV movie, it doesn't really work either. There is way too much background to stuff into the start. The CGI and the special effects are fair for a TV movie. Shiri Appleby is a little stiff considering what her character has to play with. The movie doesn't have good flow. It feels like first-time writer/director Bill Platt was trying to run through a list of plot points. This doesn't work.

Shiri Appleby is the cutest little embodiment of evil turned good girl demon-kicking Buffy clone, Elle. But I'm getting ahead of myself, you see Lilith was the first woman made by god as a companion to Adam. But she got all uppity evil feminist so god banished her from Eden. A clandestine order known as The Fath captures her but doesn't kill her, so now with amnesia (which is not really explained that well) Lilith (now Elle) is free to become the aforementioned Buffy-clone who has to battle with a mad scientist who got an injection of Lilith's blood.

If the previous paragraph sounded hideously convoluted, that's because it is. The movie is also dull, generic, and for a film with a plot steeped in theology it doesn't seem to know a lick about it. This bargain basement lousy-CGIed movie was apparently a failed series pilot. All I can say to the fact that it didn't get picked up is a resounding Amen.

My Grade: D-

DVD Extras: Commentary by Writer/Director Bill Platt and Co-writer Chris Regina; and Stills gallery; video effects samples: before & after (it also has an "also available" selection that you would THINK would lead you to some trailers, but nope on DVD covers for other films, which is a stupid idea)

DVD-ROM extras: Final shooting script and Deleted scenes transcript both in PDF format

Shiri Appleby was adorable, sexy and cute in "Roswell". However her luminescent presence in this stinker couldn't save it. What the hell was THAT plot all about? A biblical backstory with so many plot loopholes you could drive a truck through them. When you create a mythology (especially using biblical references) delve a little more into what makes it tick and why.

Good actors are wasted. David Hewlett and John DeLancie were all wasted (Hewlett mostly, looking much thinner than he does in Stargate Atlantis). I knew this was going to suck when Hewlett's character takes off his shirt and puts on a black face mask to get an injection! LOL! Either the director sucked or the editor did, there are just too many scenes where the action looked very disjointed and out of place. Either a lack of coverage for the editor to work with or a crappy shooting style, you know a movie is bad when the action scenes from a student film are better choreographed. Also the CGI was about the same caliber as a good video game .... but this is a feature film! IN a movie, the CGI has to be better than something you'd pick up at a gamestore! The battle between Lilith and the Demonicos was laughably bad! Usually films that just seem stilted and weird are foreign films made with American actors where the director was suffering from cultural schizophrenia (i.e. being pulled into two different directions at the same time.) This movie had an American Director (albeit with little experience). He might get better in the future (either that or the suits came in, took it out of his hands and ruined it ... always a possibility!) The movie "could" have been good, with a decent script, better direction, better effects, better editing .... the ending was a setup for a sequel or series, but right now I wouldn't bet on it.

This obvious pilot for an unproduced TV series features young Canadian actress Shiri Appleby as an amnesiac with some pretty incredible powers that must be put to use when a man-turned-flying demon is let loose on the world. The CGI is par for a TV job, and Appleby is OK as an amnesiac but hard to swallow as a superheroine. Familiar TV face Richard Burgi is along for the ride as Appleby's mentor, but he can do nothing to elevate this dreck above the mediocre level. We see way too much of the cartoonish flying demon right from the start, a bad sign. Also, the scenes where Burgi is training Appleby for battle are actually laughable. They are a bad copy of similar scenes in several other movies, most notably REMO WILLIAMS.

This could easily be a sci-fi channel pilot as it has all the earmarks of a Hallmark presentation with a little blood thrown in so they can call it sci-fi.

The plot is hokey, the execution is so-so, and there is no redeeming social value.

The only reason most people purchase this movie is that it contains Shiri Appleby as Lilith / Elle; she has indeed come a way since her original Taco Bell commercial days. However, one person does not make a movie.

The plotline is a distortion of myth with a little sci-fi tossed in to create a winged creature with a cute smile that shall protect humanity from evil creatures with snarly smiles.

This movie passes time for people that do not have anything better to do.

Although I agree with the earlier posting about Darklight not having much direction, I think it was initially a pilot for a series that never got greenlighted. It was like the producers had several episodes that they had to piece together to salvage what was funded in startup. The effects were good for TV -- we can't expect CGI in everything. I thought the initial storyline of Adam's first wife, Lilith, seeking to be absolved from her initial sins was a good premise. I would like to see the movie developed into a mini-series, if not a series. It could be something like 'Angel' with a flawed key figure trying to pay for the sins of the past.

From the beginning of the world, the evil first woman, Lilith, was expelled from Paradise, becoming an immortal powerful being. A secret society, The Faith, was created to chase and destroy Lilith, who loses her memory after a battle.

There is some good thinking behind this film. I really like mixing Biblical (or quasi-biblical) concepts into horror and science fiction. When done right, they are incredible. Look at "Stigmata" or "The Prophecy", just off the top of my head.

But the problem here is that such a complicated idea was put into such a small amount of time. A season 9and it would only have to be one) could flesh out the story, explain the characters... as is, it is just sort of disposable.

I love good, idea-driven sci-fi. Where there's actually a fresh concept. Not just another alien or killer android story. Darklight has an interesting hook, a she-devil who comes from the garden of eden and needs to reform herself to become a champion for man and woman kind. This movie asks for a little patience. I don't recommend it for people with A.D.D. But I believe the audience's investment is rewarded, as mine was. There's a lot going on. The story is filled with concepts, many we've seen, but they're presented in a refreshing way: a secret religious group, a mystical energy force, genetic experiments, a biblical plague, ancient curses, and more. I appreciate that the movie-makers took a novelistic approach to a TV movie. It's certainly dense. But that's a good thing IMO. I found myself discovering things on my own and not being force-fed a simplistic idea. The nicest part for me was the partnership between Lillith and William, Richard B's character. It was pretty evenly matched. I cared as much for him as I did for her and when he was struck with the plague, I wanted to see him pull through. I like David Hewlett on SGA and always liked John Delancy. Darklight was like a puzzle, when the pieces came together, it was more than the sum of its parts.

From the beginning of the world, the evil first woman, Lilith (Shiri Appleby), was expelled from Paradise, becoming an immortal powerful being. A secret society, The Faith, was created to chase and destroy Lilith, who loses her memory after a battle. In the present days, when the ambitious and wicked Anders Raeborne (David Hewlett) uses an experiment trying to become immortal, he transforms himself in the evil Demonic, a powerful dark demon that transmits a red plague with his bite and tongue. The traumatized Faith's chief agent William Shaw (Richard Burgi) is assigned by their leader Prefect (Ross Manarchy) to bring the recollection and train Lilith to face and destroy Demoniac and bring his head to The Faith to develop an antidote.

"Darklight" seems to be a pilot of a television series, and it is much underrated in IMDb. The characters recall the mutants in "X-Men", and the appearance of Lilith, played by the gorgeous Shiri Appleby, slightly resembles Mystic. The beginning of this film is a little confused, but sooner it becomes engaging, with a good story and special effects for a TV movie. There is a mistake in the sequence when Lilith is thrown by Demonic onto a car, since the car blows a fraction of second before she reaches its roof. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Darklight, o Poder da Escuridão" ("Darklight, the Power of the Darkness")

What is interesting is that the acting; was not bad, just not enough. It was rather lame., special effects nor the lines were the single culprit for this failure. Standing alone they weren't horribly bad, but put together was a tragic move. The show seemed long winded and slow with special effects apparently designed to speed the movie along, but it failed totally.

Much of the blame for this disaster was put on special effects.Don't believe it, they were kinda cool. Appleby was not the best choice for this endeavor. Though she may have been all they had to chose from with a bit of fan recogniton. An experienced actress would have brought something to the part, like Appleby never did. Scfi puts out some really good original movies, it's just too bad that this failed so drastically.

Following the release of a demonic creature, a guardian of a secret society recruits a young woman born as a special breed of unholy being to right her past wrongs and stop the creatures' rampage.

This turned out to be quite a decent effort overall. One of the better elements to this one is the inclusion of some rather fun action sense that makes this a lot more fun than it needs to be. There's a lot of rather enjoyable action scene from the training montage that fully explains her powers as well as the ensuing battle at the forum which is only their first encounter but sets the stage for later ones quite well. Even brawls inside the facility and a chase through the woods come off as rather enjoyable, though the final battle here gets the goods as being the most entertaining by being the typically drag-out brawl that's to be expected from such a final conflict. The numerous encounters here lead to some pretty decent blood and gore through the scratches, wounds and deformed bodies that are displayed along the way which are quite exciting. While being a little simplistic, there's some fun to be had here from the intriguing storyline connecting the demonic creature to her biblical past as well as the main storyline about the plague spreading throughout the rest of the world at the time. Otherwise, there's not much else to like here as the majority of the time is spent trying to get her to come to terms with her past. Not a whole lot really happens during these scenes as it just amounts to hearsay anyway but keeps going through several tries at getting the truth hammered home that it tends to conflict with the story, dragging this out so it seems to be quite slow and sluggish in terms of pace. That also tends to affect the pace as this one just doesn't have anything really interesting when not focused directly on the creature running loose and really tends to get a little sluggish at times. The CGI is simply way to fake to even be considered to make the final demon look anywhere near threatening. A suit would've looked far more threatening and imposing. The design looks cool, but the execution is way off. Beyond these, there's not a whole lot really wrong with this one.

Rated R: Violence and children-in-jeopardy.

I saw this movie tonight on the scifi channel and was very impressed. It was of higher quality than any of their previous movie of the weeks in both acting, character development, and script. The story kept me watching... Shiri Appleby's transformation to Lilith (the physical transformation with clawed hands) was a little hokey but it was still not distracting. I used to watch Roswell and I was able to get over the fact that she had been Liz Parker very easily (props to her... thats talent) I would, and will be, suggesting this movie to friends. Oh and to the review that said only a hetero would like this movie because of Shiri... I say ha! I am a scifi homo who enjoyed this movie not because of how she looked but because of.. well... everything.

18 May 2016. While this isn't a super blockbuster superhero movie, there is a fascinating, if not totally successful fusion of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and medical catastrophe in the storyline. While nothing original occurs in this movie, the blend of genres makes this movie more attractive.

The typical unsuspecting ordinary, but good looking innocent girl finds herself with a blank past and enters into the typical absolute good and evil scenario. The twist of the girl's background however and the primary guardian's moral dilemma bring some nice nuances to the typical, average horror, fantasy presentation.

The storyline is consistent, the acting decent...the movie is able to offer more than average. Nevertheless, the contagion subplot and its treatment isn't completely satisfying. And the twists are what usually are found in most typical occult, horror, suspense movies.

This movie is worth a look, if one isn't expecting a top 100 movie.

Citizen Kane...No.

But let's be honest here, we all know these films are produced on a shoestring, under ridiculously tight deadlines, probably in some foreign country...

...so as far as the low budget original Sci Fi Channel Features go, this is head and shoulders the best I've seen.

Fast paced and exciting...it's a thoroughly entertaining comic-book ride.

Much more stylish, intelligent and fluid than most Sci Fi Channel fare.

In particular, I was impressed with the sharpness of the direction.

The director, Bill Platt, seems to have a real feel for the genre, and a near encyclopedic knowledge of what's come before. I found myself repeated spotting clever visual allusions to great SF films of the past.

I'm anxious to see what Mr. Platt does next. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see his name on big time features some time down the line.

I really enjoyed this movie. I caught it last Saturday on sci fi and wasn't expecting something like this -- it actually had a message (spiritual renewal). Even though it was obviously done on a small budget, I thought the graphics for the demon were good and hold up well against other sci fi channel shows.

It's a fun update on a biblical story (I wasn't really familiar with Lilith before), and I particularly liked seeing Shiri Appleby as a tough character showing a lot of strength, both mental and physical. I liked that this small woman has to save the world.

And Richard Burgi is one handsome man. These two had nice chemistry as they have to work together. I thought Burgi played the stoic, tough guy well and added real dimension to the role.

The movie felt like it was attempting to be a comic book come to life (is it based on one?), and compared to terrible movies like Daredevil, I think pulled it off nicely. All in all, I had a good time.

Sarah

If you don't have a sense of where you're going when you put together a movie, anybody more mature than the average twelve year old is going to know it. I think that's what's wrong with 'Darklight'. Watching it, I had the unshakable impression that the actors were making up lines and situations as they went along, while the plot seemed not so much to unravel as it did fray; to sputter, rather than flow.

The special effects weren't all that hot, either. Aren't we supposed to be in the age of highly-developed CGI technology, where the creation of, say, a realistic demon (if that's not an oxymoron) on-screen almost requires nothing more outré than a software suite from Circuit City? Where nowadays what is needed most to be convincing is an actual vision, not just a vague, cartoonish idea?

And it's too bad; it's an interesting idea: Lilith, Adam's first wife, lives today, but with artificially-induced amnesia. While 'somewhat evil' herself, she is nevertheless 'kept in reserve', so to speak, by one of those secret-brotherhoods-that-last-for-millennia which has served occult fiction so well over the years, and is brought back to fight a greater evil.

At least, that's what I think is going on, but after a half-hour or so, I found myself not really caring. Even some good creepy atmosphere was not enough to save this latest 'bad babe' fantasy--particularly when the babe in question, seemingly meant to be one of those 'damaged waifs' so popular in modern fiction, comes across instead as rather mentally challenged.

If it's a cold, rainy night, and you're all sitting around, feeling a need to have some background while you play Yahtze, give it a watch. Otherwise, check out the Weather Channel.

Sweet Shiri is all grown up now and still quite lovely, but she must have been desperate for money to do this film. It's clearly low-budget. There's something wrong with the audio. It's like everyone is speaking through some sound filter. Their voices just don't sound right. This movie is so bad only a heterosexual male fan of Shiri would want to see this film. Richard Bergi, John De Lancie, Richard Gnolfo, and David Hewlett do their best to support this lousy production, but still seeing and watching Shiri is the only incentive to continue to the end of the film. I have no idea why this movie is Rater R. The Cable Guide referred to this as a Comedy, Romance and Horror flick. It wasn't funny or scary to watch.