First off, I have to say that is one of the coolest horror movie trailers I've seen in a long time. It starts off remarkably cheesy and becomes nightmare fuel. Something about those whispers . . .
Unfortunately, "And Soon The Darkness" comes nowhere close to being as entertaining as the trailer.
All of these "whodunits" tend to fall into one of two categories: Either the crazy guy who acts suspicious the whole movie is the killer, in which case the audience has to wait for the inevitable "That's why I was acting so crazy, cuz I'm crazy!" moment OR the crazy guy who acts suspicious the whole movie is actually the hero. And the movie just ends and they don't explain why he was acting so crazy the whole time.
No matter how you cut it, though, both endings are lame and the journey getting to the conclusion can either be thrilling and suspenseful or "And Soon The Darkness."
It's an interesting concept because the two young girls are portrayed as confident and strong. They're pretty realistic in the way they react to their situations. And the fact that they're in France on holiday but have a limited grasp of the language makes us feel as isolated as they are; this film has no subtitles even though whole scenes are in French. The point is that since they can't understand what's being said, we can't either.
The movie falls apart though once the plot really kicks in: the blonde girl goes missing after the pair of friends have a fight and split up. From that point on every character Jane meets is a weirdo. The arguing French couple: weirdos. The cop and his deaf cousin/brother/boyfriend: weirdos. The ex-pat who drives a rickety half VW/half mail truck: weirdo.
 |
| It looks like a Transformer and a mailbox had a baby . . . that transformed into another, crappier Transformer. |
But the biggest weirdo of them all is Paul who claims to be a cop but not from France who was working on the case of a previous murder 3 years ago but just because it was interesting and not because he was a cop. He steals film from a camera, destroys the film in the camera (both of these in front of Jane who is already suspicious of him.) He keeps trying to lure her into the bushes, screams and chases her when she runs away, breaks into a house that she is hiding in, slowly stalks her through the house, chases her into the woods once more and SURPRISE he's not the killer!
Nope, it's the cop with the deaf roommate!
Which would be shocking if Jane hadn't found the dead body of her friend stuffed in the cop's closet.
Yes, even after she finds a corpse on the cop's property Jane still thinks the Paul is the killer to the point of bashing his head in with a rock.
If you're thinking now, "Damnit Jason, why did you spoil this movie!" let me once again say in my defense that this movie really only had one of two endings. It's an hour and a half of introducing creepy characters until one is revealed in the end to be more creepy than the others. Of course, the cop tries to rape Jane until he gets his head bashed in by Paul who, despite bleeding profusely and undergoing head trauma himself just minutes ago, saves the day.
I always wonder when I watch these types of films what is the day to day life in these small towns? Do they always act so weird even when a killer isn't on the loose? How's the job market? Do people just stare each other down and mumble to each other when they're buying milk from the market or whisper cautious phrases to the waitress as their ham and eggs are being served? What is their main means of economic output? Rusted car-part exports? Produce covered in terror sweat? It can't be tourism. Maybe these towns double as a haunted house for all the non-weirdo communities nearby.
"And Soon The Darkness" has a great title and an awesome trailer. But the movie itself is slow (not tense) and predictable. The trailer concludes "No one, positively no one, will be admitted during the last terrifying minutes of this film." If only that non admittance policy had been enforced for the first 89 minutes of this movie as well . .
No comments:
Post a Comment