Darkness Falls follows a somewhat similar plot line as the previous year's entry in the genre,They,with a few differences.One,Darkness Falls has a fairly well fleshed out back story.Two,the acting is generally fairly good.three,the monster has a reason for being,a motivation for its actions.also,the monster has a weakness,which can be exploited.the core storyline is descent for this genre.the movie is better paced and much better edited.the monster itself is however,not so great.the look of the creature isn't the problem.the problem are its movements,which do not look authentic in some scenes.now,the characters themselves--very little in the form of character development.pretty much your stock horror characters.none too bright and reacting in ways which real people(hopefully)would not.yet,strangely likable somehow.you kind of take pity on them.suspense--there were some tense moments.there was a fair amount of action.however,at times the film became chaotic--lots of sounds and sights all at once,including the music.the purpose,to pretend to entertain the viewer,well hiding the movie's shortcomings.in essence disguising the fact that the movie isn't achieving its intended purpose.in this case,frightening the viewer or at least heightening his or her anxiety.and now the ending.it does nicely resolve things.no cheap setup for a sequel here.i think it's a better movie than They.is it a good movie?yes.it has some tense moments with a few decent action sequences and a decent,straightforward ending without the usual unexpected(but really expected))twist.for me,Darkness Falls is a 6.5/10

Kyle Walsh (Chaney Kley) returns to the small town of Darkness Falls to help his childhood girlfriend, Caitlin Greene (Emma Caulfield),whose brother is hospitalized with severe night terrors. It seems that a town legend of the "Tooth Fairy" is haunting his imagination, and Walsh had similar experiences. Is the "Tooth Fairy" more than just a childhood myth?

It's so much fun watching films multiple times. It's very rare that my opinion remains the same on a film from one viewing to the next. Sometimes my rating goes down, sometimes it goes up, and sometimes it stays the same, but I like or dislike the film for different reasons than I did on my first viewing. Darkness Falls (2003) is a case where my rating has gone up quite a bit since my last encounter with it. I think the difference this time was for two primary reasons--one, when I first saw this in the theater it was in the midst of a slew of horror films that had similar themes, and maybe I was getting tired of it by the time I watched this one, and two, I think the positive aspects worked well enough for me this time that I was more forgiving of the few flaws the film has.

And it does have flaws. Let's get those out of the way first. The main flaw for me was some of the super-fast editing during the horror "action" scenes. Occasionally it was so fast that I couldn't very well tell what was going on. However, I also realized this time that at least occasionally, the editing is perfect for the scene. For example, there is a scene set the small town police station that is inherently chaotic. Chaotic editing is the only thing that would fit.

The other flaw is that there are occasional lapses in plot logic. The most crucial for me occurred during the climax, where there were a couple actions taken that I was a bit confused about. It didn't help that the climax is also slightly marred with hyperactive editing.

However, in both of those cases, the good stuff far outweighed the bad for me. The villain in Darkness Falls is excellent in conception and design. The backstory is captivating. When it's initially told through a "slideshow" during the opening credits, I was thinking that I would have preferred them to give me a 10-minute historical prologue, but in retrospect, I'd prefer to see an entire film that's a prequel telling the villain's story. I loved the small town setting of the film, and the interactions of the characters in the script. They seemed like real people to me, with entwined pasts. I loved the three main characters, and thought their performances were very good. Since I'm a big Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan, that might have supplied Emma Caulfield with some unconscious bonus points, but I loved her acting here.

What really matters in a film like this is the horror material, and director Jonathan Liebesman handles it skillfully. Although I'm not usually a fan of modern films having shorter running times (it was more understandable back in the days of literal A and B films on the same bill at a theater),Darkness Falls is compact because there is little "dead time" between the suspenseful material. Liebesman only spends as much time as necessary with "serious drama" to amplify the horror. These types of scenes were handled well enough to make me either forget or not care if there were any rules broken when it comes to keeping the villain at bay.

Although I'm not someone who finds films scary, I can see Darkness Falls working for many viewers in terms of frights. Many primal fears are touched upon. There is an excellent extended bit in complete darkness (you only hear the soundtrack),and of course darkness and things coming out of the darkness is a major theme throughout. You also get scenes of claustrophobia, loss of control, elevators, hospitals, and many other situations that should work on more receptive viewers' sensibilities.

This one is worth seeing, but approach it more in the frame of mind of a fun roller-coaster ride than a literary masterpiece.

Oh great, I thought. Another teen-friendly PG-13 horror film that'll turn out to be a toothless (pun intended) waste of money and time. It didn't help that I'd just watched THE FOG remake, which represented everything bland, boring and senseless about modern Hollywood horrors. And then I watched DARKNESS FALLS, and I was hooked, and I realised something about halfway through: this is actually a great movie.

It's a film indebted to the recent wave of Asian horrors as characters are menaced by a female ghost who dispatches her victims off-screen. The 'witch's curse' type storyline is pretty predictable, but I liked the way they tied it into the tooth fairy myth – always great when they're frightening poor little defenceless kids – and there's something always slightly creepy about using witches, mainly because they're not made up. Certainly if you look through history you'll find many well-documented curse stories that have no scientific basis. Anyway, I liked DARKNESS FALLS a lot mainly because it avoids the traps that much kid-friendly fare falls into. The script is okay, the acting isn't bad at all and the clichés are done away with early on so that we can actually get on with the film itself.

To make matters better, around halfway through the scriptwriter does away with the set-up and storyline altogether and this turns into one big, terrifying chase movie, not unlike TERMINATOR 2. It becomes a battle of wits between the dwindling humans and the tooth fairy, and the idea that stepping into the dark equals death leads to plenty of great visual situations. Yes, it is a bit unbelievable how every light source seemingly dies out within minutes of being lit or switched on, but the film makes full use of its premise and I had a ball with it.

Strangely enough, the child actors are far more convincing than their adult counterparts this time around, with the exception of the lead, played by Chaney Kley. Kley, who died in 2007 – coincidentally from a sleep-related disorder – gives a great performance as the tired, jaded, everyman hero, his whole life ruined thanks to the tooth fairy herself. He really convinces in his part and he made me want to keep watching. Sure, things get a little predictable with the whole fiery climax, but the tooth fairy – designed by Stan Winston, no less – is genuinely creepy and disturbing and the scares come thick and fast. I, for one, loved it.