Darkness Rising

Hilarious! A work of comedic genius! You'll laugh out loud! Wait....what? This is supposed to be a horror movie? Oh. Well. Uh....yeah. This is a terrible horror movie, but the awful acting and nonsensical circumstances will probably make you laugh so....it's got that going for it, which is nice. (gunga-gunga-gulanga)

Was drawn into seeing 'Darkness Rising', with as said for many films seen an intriguing if not exactly novel premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

'Darkness Rising', simply put, turned out to be a terrible film and waste of potential with next to no redeeming values and so much done catastrophically wrong. One of the worst films seen in a while, which is saying a lot for somebody who on the most part has been encouraged by their film/television watching and has more often than that been quite generous. Decent idea, horrendous execution.

Lets start with one positive. The scenery is atmospheric, if wasted by the schlocky way the film is shot and particularly edited.

However, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their irritating and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrate. Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The acting is pretty bad to put it lightly and the effects are ropy at best.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling, not to mention far too exposition-heavy, while the pace is uneven, dragging in a lot of the first half, which goes on forever and fails to get going, and never is it exciting after a truly irrelevant beginning. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness and the lack of tension and suspense. Too many elements are introduced, and then dropped, barely explored or don't go anywhere, sometimes even all three.

A lot of the film completely fails to make sense, both in underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations. There is a lot of choppiness and lack of coherence. The threat is poorly used and poses very little threat. The film completely peters out with an ending that felt like an afterthought.

All in all, terrible. 1/10 Bethany Cox

The scariest thing about this movie is that people actually edited it and thought it was fit for the human public. A horror movie does not have to have a huge budget but I would think that when it comes to the actors the purse strings shouldn't be so tight. Where in tarnation did they get the Madison character? My cat could have put on a better performance. For most of the movie she did this awful sobbing voice whine for about 85% of the movie. Someone mentioned her awful portrayal of a limp and they were spot on, it was like she thought she was doing improv or something. I cant believe her bio states that she went to a performing arts school? The dog in the movie was more convincing than her. The script only made matters worse. Was the writer under character limits? Many lines in the movie were repeated several times in many scenes, I had the captions on so I literally could see that the script was full of the actors repeating themselves and with the same awful intonations each time. The plot is so stupid and could have been forgiven id the movie had hired writers and real actors instead of their neighbors.

I am very much upset I picked this out to watch on my night off. tsk tsk,

I don't like to write reviews. But I've watched so many terrible horrors, I feel like I have to say something.

This movie is gawd awful. Everything that is wrong with current horror is in this movie - amplified; false jump scare, forgettable characters with no intelligence spitting nonsensical lines, unnecessary special effects (the house has a Star Trek force field, dude really?), it's annoyingly loud, unimaginative and confusing non-existing story line.

This movie made me physically mad.

I had to reward myself with ice cream having endured a terrible experience called Darkness Rising.

Save yourself the time, skip it.

Cannot even convey how horribly lame this production was. Gotta give em credit tho, they managed to find three actors equal to the task put before them. Did I mention, it's really .....bad. Does not contain "spoilers"- not possible, really bad.