Although “Darkness Falls” honestly tries to stand out amongst cookie-cutter horror movies, it ultimately fails in its attempts due to the combination of a bad story, poor acting and laughable special effects.
The movie itself has a promising beginning, in which through sepia-toned images we are educated of the story’s background which supposedly took place more than 150 years ago.
We are presented with a fairy-tale gone horribly awry. In a small Maine town there was an elderly woman named Matilda Dixon, nicknamed “The Tooth Fairy,” because she liked to collect baby teeth from the children of Darkness Falls in exchange for gold coins.
One day her house caught on fire and she was so severely burnt that she had to wear a porcelain mask because her skin was so sensitive to the light and could only go outside at night. She still attended to the town’s children with coins on their doorsteps when they left their baby teeth there.
Fast forward a few years to when two children did not return after leaving from a visit to her house, the suspicious townsfolk ceremoniously hung and then burned the innocent woman, who of course, then laid a curse upon the entire town. The next day, the children turned up completely safe and sound. From then on every child was told, “don’t peek” when they put their final baby tooth beneath their pillows.
The legend holds that if the children (or anyone else) saw the ghostly woman’s mutilated face, the “Tooth Fairy” (for some odd reason) would kill them. Of course, as with much of the film, this makes absolutely no sense since the old lady was said to have loved the children while she was alive.
This brings us to near present day, where we see the unfortunate events that surround the life of a preteenage boy named Kyle (Chaney Kley).
After losing his last tooth, Kyle finds himself face-to-face with the “Tooth Fairy” and survives by hiding in the light, but is unable to save his mother.
Now, years later, after being considered a crazed murderer by everyone in the town and deathly afraid of falling asleep (“Nightmare on Elm Street” anyone?) he is called back to help his childhood girlfriend, Caitlin (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s” Emma Caulfield).
It is Caitlin’s hope that Kyle can save her younger brother Michael (newcomer Lee Cormie) who too has glimpsed upon the face of the infamous “Tooth Fairy.”
These first fifteen minutes or so of the movie, in which we see the young boy face the “Tooth Fairy,” succeed in drawing the audience in and create overwhelming feelings of uneasiness and fright. Unfortunately this promising beginning is all completely lost over the next hour or so.
Outright laughable at many points, the movie can barely hold the audience’s attention. A few quick bits of humor offered by Kley is unfortunately one of the only things that can actually keep the audience from leaving their seat.
This movie was based on a short film “The Tooth Fairy” (2001). It also has had the alternate titles “Tooth Fairy: Every Legend Has a Dark Side” and “Don’t Peek,” and has spawned a McFarlane toy action figure.
If you really enjoy going to cheap haunted houses around Halloween time, then this may be the movie for you.
“Darkness Falls” opened Friday and is rated PG-13 for terror and horror images, and brief language.
