Angst vor der Dunkelheit

I found it difficult to keep with this film. It is achingly slow with not enough happening to retain interest. Also a big problem is that the actor playing the principal character is appallingly amateurish,with very stilted diction. Little wonder this is a forgotten film. Really they don't make horror films the way Hammer and Amicus made them.

Psychological horror stories often rely on clichéd images and stories to evoke terror from the audience. A notable exception is the film "Afraid of the Dark" which stars Ben Keyworth as an 11 year old boy who struggles with morbid fears of going blind, as well as fears of a stalker in the streets of London who preys on the blind. This moody thriller has a convoluted story and abstract pace that make it difficult to decipher, but the movie is worth the effort due to it's subtle horror that is mesmerizing! This one ferments in the psyche long after viewing. Keyworth is joined by a strong cast including Fanny Ardent, and James Fox, but Keyworth is the true strength of the film. His intense demeanor is riveting!

If your experience of blindness in movies is limited to A Patch of Blue, The Miracle Worker or Scent of a Woman, you'll find this one very disorienting. It starts with the boy seeing all sorts of strange goings-on--blind people getting aggressed in the streets of London, even murdered by a razor-wielding maniac. Then half way through we see the 'blind' people are sighted and the boy has severe vision problems. There's an undeniable power to some of the images (Clare Holman doing a nude photo session with a creepy photographer will stick in my mind for a while) but the script is too digressive for the story to cohere.

Mark Peploe wrote Profession: Reporter for Antonioni and three films for Bertolucci; his talent has been recognized for decades. With a bit more discipline, this could have been a classic.

This is a very interesting film. If you watched it without any knowledge of what the storyline was then you should have been intrigued by the slightly twisted world the lead character lives in.

That is about as much as I can describe the film without ruining it by telling you more.

In terms of a film despite living in England my whole life I do tend to prefer cheerier sets than those seen in this film. I find them depressing to be honest. Some people will probably find that adds to the film or its message.

My strongest post viewing thought was, I wish they had crammed more into the film to push the story along. There is some good stuff here, but I fear that many viewers will just be lost or lose patience; if you don't feed a dog he won't be your friend.

Persuaded that his blind mother is threatened by a murderer, a little boy leads an inquiry which leads him to the brink of madness.

Variation on the psychological thriller, "Clairvoyance" tugs us, in the course of a tortuous intrigue, into a shady world, where reality and imagination get completely muddled. A puzzling and alarming work.