Dark Hall

Seriously, I kit you not. %80 of the movie is filmed in almost complete darkness to the point I could hardly see what the hell was going on. Must have bean dead cheap to make if nothing could be seen.

Film is OKish, nothing that wasn't done before but the freaking darkness just annoyed me.

I'd never heard of this, but the moment I saw the cast I had to make it my bedtime movie and initially I felt happy about my decision. Sadly like most things, that didn't last.

Starring Uma Thurman, Isabelle "Orphan" Fuhrman and AnnaSophia "Bridge to Terabithia" Robb this is a teen horror with a great concept but weak delivery.

It tells the story of a group of "Bad" girls sent off to a mysterious boarding school run by Uma Thurman. There they are taught 4 core lessons, and take to each subject at alarming rates.

Now I have to speak of AnnaSophia Robb, when Bridge to Terabithia (2007) came out I saw big things in the girls future. I predicted that she'd have a great career, she was a solid actress for her age so she'd go far..........right? Well that didn't quite work out, I missed the mark on that one but I stand by her competence and it was nice to see her leading here.

The film looks the part, the setting is fantastic, the cast do a great job and I liked the ideas as they began to unravel but something wasn't quite right. The pacing? The finale? I think it was a concoction of these things and more, ultimately the film is filled with great ideas but the creators didn't know what to do with them.

Down a Dark Hall is an interesting movie and you can do worse with 90 minutes. Sadly like me you might come away thinking it should have been better when the credits roll.

The Good:

Great cast

Solid setting

The Bad:

Doesn't come together very well

Rushed finale

What annoyed me the most about this movie was the drab, very dark photography. There are lots of scenes where you can barely make out what is happening onscreen. It's fine to make a movie using only natural candles (and low light bulbs) as lightning, but it should be done professionally, and without everything looking gray and washed out.

The plot begins nice, moody and intriguing, but the minute Ms Duret is on the screen, it starts to border on the comical. Her flat character acts, talks, sounds and dresses like a cynical parody of a dumb, pompous headmistress who has no clue what she is doing, but wants to appear competent no matter what.

The script looses focus, basic reason and coherency in the middle of the movie, and it all pretty much falls apart in the end. The last scenes are very touching, but hardly make you feel satisfied or rewarded for watching a dark screen (with some fire and candlelight on it) and listening to Duret blabbering about being a Genius or feeling inspired. She is a deluded narcissist living in a dream world, but how she could ever establish & run this surreal, otherworldly school is another of the many questions the sketchy script does not care to answer.

The score is very classy and stylish though, unlike the rest of this forgettable production.

AnnaSophia Robb and Uma Thurman lead the cast in the supernatural horror film Down a Dark Hall. Based on a bestselling book, the story follows a rebellious teenage girl who's sent to a reform school for troubled youth called Blackwood, but she soon discovers that something strange is going on and begins to suspect that she and her fellow students are being used for some nefarious purpose. Robb gives a fairly good performance and director Rodrigo Cortes does an impressive job at creating an atmospheric mood. However, the storytelling is a little weak and lacks strong villains. Also, the supernatural isn't really played for scares, and the scares that are there seem a little out of place. Still, despite its problems, Down a Dark Hall is a creepy thriller full of mystery and intrigue.

I think I know what happened to this movie, at least in part: It's adapted from a book written in the 70s, and that's why part of it feels like a period piece and so much of it feels just a little "off." Why didn't they just set it in the 70s? Did they think the audience wouldn't relate to timeless issues like rebellious kids in a nightmare school? Setting it in present day didn't fit the feeling of the school at all. That felt disjointed.

But ultimately, the problem for me is that the movie isn't fulfilling. The ending feels cliche and attempt to give some kind of closure but fails. I absolutely loved the premise of this thing and wished they would have gone further with it, but they didn't. In fact, I felt like they hardly spent any time with it at all. They spent so much time showing us that the kids are all delinquents and the headmistress is controlling and the school is dark and spooky but ignored the good stuff until the end, when it was supposed to be an a-ha! Moment but it just kind of falls flat.

I loved the performances, the setting, the score, and, like I said, the premise, but I kept getting angry at the movie and its characters for doing dumb things and for constantly bombarding me with conflict rather than resolution. They tease you with it, but never really give it to you, even when they try, and it's maddening.

You're gonna laugh at me, but I didn't even recognize Uma Thurman at first. I didn't recognize Anna Sophia Robb, either, but she's grown a little since the last movie I saw her in. I thought both did a wonderful job. The girl from the movie "Orphan" was in this, too, but she didn't have as much screen time.

There's a lot I liked about this movie, and I really wish the story had been more fulfilling than it was. In my head, I'm comparing it to The Kingsmen, where similarly, kids are sent to a school with strict rules to be refined into better versions of themselves, but that journey was MUCH more fulfilling and fun. It also kind of reminds me of the movie Seance, which I didn't like because it turned out to be something other than what it was advertised as, but felt more complete than this did. I also got shades of Harry Potter from this, and now that I think of it more, there are a ton of parallels. I'd recommend watching any of those over this one, but, according to most people's ratings here, if you want to watch this, you probably won't hate it, it's just probably not going to be high on your rating list either.