After Darkness

Okay so, to be fair, there are worse films one could point to than this odd snoozefest, but make no mistake, from start to finish you will find yourself wondering if your 98 minutes could be better spent doing something else. Nevermind the affront to science, there are bigger problems. The acting isn't the worst but it's pretty bad, maybe slightly better than an after school special but I'll admit I might be giving it too much credit. The characters are more like caricatures, and it's hard to care what happens to such shallow, exaggerated cliches. I wouldn't even really call this a scifi, more like a drama with science fiction undertones, and a bad one at that.

I watched this movie clear through so you don't have to, and don't endure to the end expecting to be rewarded for your sacrifice. I've seen some films that started out terrible but ended up surprising me. This was not one of those films. My suggestion is this: If after the first five minutes you find yourself hoping it gets better, know that it won't and stop wasting your time - I wish that I had. On the other hand if you're bored to tears and there's nothing else to watch, you could do worse (just not by much). I realize not everyone is going to agree with my low markings but if I really liked this movie I'd avoid going all in on five stars because it's so clearly bad that I'd look like a shill.

So I feel like IMdB ratings are 80% accurate. Think because of the production quality and the actors/actresses featured this was amongst the 20% wrong rating but 4 is absolutely fair. Never once was I drawn into what was happening on the screen. I just kept waiting for something, anything, interesting to happen and yeah no. Scenes that were supposed to be climatic came off as forced. I typically watch movies distracted and if they make me say, wait what - I will give it my undivided attention. I cannot even remember the characters names.

Like watching paint dry. I like these actors so gave it the benefit of the doubt. Wish I had cleaned out the refrigerator instead.

This is hardly a masterpiece but it's not terrible either. If you go in expecting this to be filled with riveting drama or action or to simply be like many other films with similar subject matter, you're probably going to be disappointed. This isn't that. There's very little action and even the drama is relatively tame.

The story focuses on this broken family isolated in a mansion. They aren't in the center of what's going on. They aren't even paying attention to the news updates so the audience doesn't get much information. In fact, this almost apocalyptic event seems to mostly exist as a plot device to get this family back together and stress them out. The entire thing is just learning about this family and their history as they fight to survive what seems to be an apocalyptic event.

The science of the movie is well... is there any? We don't actually know much about what's going on, but it's probably not scientifically possible. That being said, it seems the idea of the movie might have been drawn from Lord Byrons poem, Darkness. So perhaps it wasn't meant to be scientifically accurate and instead just show a take on this dream that happened in the poem.

I think if you take the movie for what it's actually meant to be and do, it's not that bad. It's still no masterpiece and it's hard to watch sometimes, mostly because the behavior of the father really bothered me. This family is messed up. But if you like calmer movies with a little bit of an apocalyptic setting that focus more on individuals and families, you might actually enjoy this. But if you need riveting drama and action to keep you interested in something.. you should probably look for something else.

The sun is going dark for an unknown reason. The Beaty family has gathered at home waiting for rescue that may not come.

This movie has a big idea but the question is what it does with it. It does very little with it. It turns the camera inwards upon this family. It's asking all the small questions. It ignores the one big question. The characters don't deal with it. I also question that the earth is still warm somehow. It should get cold much faster. It should be nuclear winter. Science is not the first concern in this movie with the big sci-fi idea. I'm not even going to question the green grass. At the end of the day, the family drama holds no real drama. Without actual drama, the movie struggles to gain traction.