Movie adaptations of much-loved books can rarely satisfy the fans, but even making allowances for that, this is a deeply disappointing film. People not familiar with Susan Cooper's "Dark is Rising" cycle will find this simply another lackluster and occasionally bewildering teen fantasy film, while anyone who read and enjoyed Cooper's books would be well-advised to steer clear of the film altogether: it will simply make them angry.
The attraction of Cooper's books is that they are both mythologically and psychologically powerful. Her characters are well-drawn, complex and believable, and the story is deeply rooted in British mythology. The film has none of that: the mythological aspect has been entirely excised, and the psychology reduced to the lowest common-denominator of teen alienation. Even the quintessentially English character of the stories was apparently judged too threatening or complex for American audiences, so the protagonist has been Americanized and the setting reduced to some cutesy chocolate-box Hollywood vision of rural England.
Probably the only bright point of the movie is Alexander Ludwig, in the part of Will Stanton. He isn't Cooper's Will Stanton, but he turns in a respectable performance. In this, he's in marked contrast to the adult actors who seem mostly to have phoned in their work.
Granted, the script writer hasn't given any of them much to do. Ian McShane's Merriman, a pivotal character in the books, has been reduced to intoning portentously "... for you are the Seeker ..." at regularly-spaced intervals. Naturally, in a film that assumes that the audience must be spoon-fed, everything has to be telegraphed, repeatedly if necessary. It's not enough to have fancy visual effects and abrupt changes of season; someone has to actually announce that the characters are traveling in time. Apparently, the film-makers don't think the audience are going to be able to figure that one out for themselves. It's educational to contrast the subtlety and effectiveness with which Cooper reveals her world in the books with the kind of ham-fisted lay-it-on-with-a-trowel exposition that the makers of the film considered necessary.
The result is a rambling mess where the hero stumbles through his required tasks - all of which fall more or less into his lap without any great dramatic tension - until the predictable last-minute rout of the forces of darkness. Even someone with no prior exposure to Cooper's work is likely to find it dull. It can't be judged good or enjoyable by any standard.
Quite how the movie came to be such a travesty is difficult to say. The source material, had anyone associated with the movie bothered to read it, is compelling and well-structured, such that simply following the story faithfully (and preserving some of Cooper's dialog) would have made for a much better movie. In the hands of, for example, the BBC, it could have made an excellent mini-series. Screenwriter John Hodge must take much of the blame for his insipid and amateurish screenplay, yet his track record - including the excellently- written "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" - makes me wonder if he contrived this disaster all himself, or if he was under pressure from director Cunningham (whose own resume might have led one to predict that he would make something like this) to dumb everything down for the benefit of some imaginary audience of American teenagers with single-digit IQs.
There's no reason to waste time on this film (I saw it on an airplane). If you know how to read, you'd be vastly better off spending the time and the money on the original books.
