The Dark (15) GERARD SAMPAIO April 06 2006
Dir: John Fawcett
With: Maria Bello, Sean Bean, Maurice Roëves, Sophie Stuckey
Although refreshingly free of irony and synthetic American teenagers, The Dark borrows heavily from recent Japanese horror films (Dark Water in particular), without ever matching them for atmosphere or scares.
Adèle (Maria Bello) takes her young daughter, Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) to a remote stretch of the Welsh coastline to visit her estranged father, James (Sean Bean). Sarah goes missing – and a similar looking Welsh child inexplicably shows up. This evidently has something to do with the mass suicide of a bunch of daft cultists who threw themselves off the local cliffs in the 1950s – and the fact that Adèle is a bad mother.
Handsomely shot and solidly performed by Bello and Bean, The Dark gets bogged down trying to explain itself just when it should be hitting a horrific crescendo. And the scary little girl thing is really getting old.
Copyright © 2006 Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/goingout/59541.html
