What will be next for the silver screen?  A disgruntled Santa Claus becomes a mass murderer, and the Easter Bunny goes on a killing spree, coming soon to a theater near you! Boy I can’t wait for that. Well why not, if a movie with basically unknown actors, an unknown director, Jonathan Liebesman, and an unknown writer, John Fasano can put together a horror film about the Tooth Fairy and hit number one at the box office, who is to say our ever so generous childhood icons won’t be the next ones to defile the movie industry.

Darkness Falls starts out like any other movie we have seen when they need to give the history of the town, the town being Darkness Falls. A sweet little old woman used to give children a gold coin in exchange for their baby teeth, then a fire destroyed her home and left her horribly disfigured. She took to wearing a porcelain mask, and light hurt her so she only came out at night. One night two children disappeared and she was blamed. Yes it is always the sweet old ladies that abduct children. She was taken into town and hung. She put a curse on the town and proclaimed what she gave in kindness she will take in revenge. The two boys came home the next night. So the town hid their dirty little secret. Hmmmmm sounds a little like A Nightmare on Elm Street, only she was innocent. Well, now whenever a child loses their last baby tooth she comes to claim them. If they look at her she kills them, only light still hurts her. Well 150 years later, young Kyle Walsh (Joshua Anderson) hits 13 and just lost his last tooth, his girlfriend Cat (Emily Browning, Ghost Ship) reminds him not to look, you know urban legend and all. Well he gets scared, grabs his flashlight and takes a peek. She attacks and he gets away because of his flashlight. His mother (Rebecca McCauley) comes to see why he screamed as he was cowering in the hall. She goes to investigate in a dark room. Why didn’t she just turn on the light? When do people go to check out a noise and look for it in the dark? Well the Tooth Fairy (Antony Burrows) rips her to pieces while Kyle hides in the well-lit bathtub. Kyle takes the blame and has to go away. The Tooth Fairy is still out to get him, but he never leaves the light. Cut to 12 years later and Cat-Caitlin (Emma Caulfield, from Buffy) has a little brother Michael (Lee Cormie) in the hospital because he is too afraid of the dark and won’t fall asleep. Well, he has also seen the Tooth Fairy and lived to relive the nightmare. So Caitlin tracks down Kyle (Chaney Kley, Legally Blonde) to see how he overcame his fear of the dark. So the massive killing begins.

If you didn’t pick up on it earlier, I am not a fan of this movie, the concept or the deranged attack on childhood icons, not to mention the psychological damage it can do to kids associating the Tooth Fairy with death. Yes, children will not be seeing this film, but the adults that do will still be telling these kids to put their teeth under their pillow and the Tooth Fairy that enters your dark room while you sleep will bring you a surprise. Okay, now that my moral outrage has been vented and my public disdain for Darkness Falls has been expressed, the actors were believable, the camera angles and lighting kept you in suspense. Overall, if I could get past the whole concept, it would not have been a bad film. Also appearing in this movie were, Andrew Bayly, Mark Blackmore, Peter Curin, Daniel Daperis, Andrew Dauchy, Kestie Morassi, Grant Piro and Peter Stanton. Since I can’t accept the plot, or the antagonist, I only give this film a three on the About-Movies.com scale.

Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:46:07 AM

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