The Fear of Darkness

Easily one of the best looking horror movies I've seen. And it doesn't resort to computer generated images much. It's the lights and the colors that get most of the job done here. "The Fear of Darkness" doesn't sound bad either. Both the sound effects and the music, where the movie uses them, are just fine. Not as impressive as the visuals, but still strong. Not a problem. What is a problem, however, is the content of this package. It may slightly remind you of Mike Flanagan's "Oculus" from 2013 with how what's really happening and what is only happening in somebody's head are sometimes hard to tell from one another. Only that movie had more scares. And it had a much clearer ending. One that wasn't confusing and anticlimactic. Also, with what sets the plot in motion here, Travis Z's "The Midnight Man" from 2016 could have been a prequel to this movie. But again, having certain things remain a mystery didn't prevent that movie from telling you a clear story, and an uncompromising one. Christopher Fitchett's "The Fear of Darkness" here looks very good and sounds good, but as for the story told, it is good at setting things up, exploring things, leading the viewer up to things, but when it's time for set ups to pay off and conclusions to be arrived at, there can be disappointment. And that prevents the plot of the film from reaching high enough.

Partially investigative drama and halfhearted thriller, The Fear of Darkness is a movie focused on a disturbed character, who may or may not be involved in paranormal activity. Horror movies tend to use this premise, but the main character Sky is neither charismatic nor enigmatically appealing. Despite much effort on delivering scientific based narrative, in which there is abundance of them, it eventually falls on insipid twist without accomplishing much.

For this type of thriller to work, the movie needs intriguing characters or having good chemistry between the cast. It has none of those. Sky (Penelope Mitchell) has two rigid expressions, utterly confused and overblown panic. There's barely any range on acting aside from looking distraught the entire time and it doesn't help establishing any nuance for personality. Meanwhile, the supposedly nurturing psychiatrist Sarah Faithful (Maeve Dermody) is plain and too formulaic of a character to stand out.

The movie moves agonizingly slow, switching from between possible haunting and the psychologist handling the case. There's actually a bulk of the runtime spent panning across bedroom without anything happening, not to mention there are interviews that feel redundant. Script either bombards the audience with heavy pseudo-science mumbling or constant shouting of the same question.

It chooses to bring medications or suggestive trance for the strange behavior, and at times it almost looks like it's going somewhere with these plot devices. However, it only amounts to basic mystery spectacle, lacking any substance for all the flamboyant talk. It does produce good soundtracks overall, they sound like something out of fantasy flicks and admittedly a pleasant surprise.

Only the most avid fans of mystery thriller would find some enjoyment here, because for all the psychological narrative, it only amounts to tedious dialogues.

I watched this so-called, "Psychological Thriller" only to arrive at an ending that left me totally confused! I loathe when horror movies end with the audience hanging about its ending. There are just waaaaay to many questions that pop up throughout this movie and especially at the end. Are the two main female characters one-and-the-same? Or not? Is each one of these two said characters hallucinating or is it just one of them? The ending was simply ridiculous! If I could, I would rate this movie with 1/2 star for its photography, but nothing more. A ridiculous waste of my time! I rate it a D- and that's being generous. :(

This film is all "blah blah blah" and nothing happens. The script is dreadful and you can really see they had trouble working out how to end it all with a tedious little twist that you saw coming a mile away. There were just too many scenes were people were talking at each other for what was 10 minutes every scene with a couple of little "frights" (and I do mean LITTLE) in between. By half way through I got bored and started fast forwarding all the walking bits because if people were;t talking they were walking and it all seemed so padded out. The acting was pretty average and even Aaron Pederson who is usually pretty good felt like he'd just walked onto the set and didn't know what film he was in. Honestly, it's all a bit of a dog's breakfast. EXCEPT, the one thing that is actually very good is the cinematography, so obviously they paid someone good to do that. Overall, it's just a pretty looking borefest.

Skye Williams (Penelope Mitchell) is found cowering in a corner. Her boyfriend is missing. Dr. Sarah Faithfull (Maeve Dermody) is brought in to investigate. Skye is haunted by her ordeal and the after-effects of a powerful drug with which the couple had been experimenting. She is deadly afraid of the dark and an imaginary figure.

This is a psychological horror with a few atmospheric scares. There is not enough and it needs to make more sense. I can see at least two possible route for the premise. One is a body switch premise. The other is multiple personality premise. Neither actually works with the construction of this movie. I think they're going for an alternate dimensional evil which doesn't connect with the ending at all. This is a small Australian horror with two beautiful ladies. This has a couple of familiar moves but ultimately ends with a faltering landing. I'm looking through filmmaker Christopher Fitchett's credits. He seems to have made a few movies in the 80's and then worked on other people's shorts in the 2000's. I don't have much expectations for his future work.