The Fear of Darkness

Skye Williams (Penelope Mitchell) is found cowering in a corner. Her boyfriend is missing. Dr. Sarah Faithfull (Maeve Dermody) is brought in to investigate. Skye is haunted by her ordeal and the after-effects of a powerful drug with which the couple had been experimenting. She is deadly afraid of the dark and an imaginary figure.

This is a psychological horror with a few atmospheric scares. There is not enough and it needs to make more sense. I can see at least two possible route for the premise. One is a body switch premise. The other is multiple personality premise. Neither actually works with the construction of this movie. I think they're going for an alternate dimensional evil which doesn't connect with the ending at all. This is a small Australian horror with two beautiful ladies. This has a couple of familiar moves but ultimately ends with a faltering landing. I'm looking through filmmaker Christopher Fitchett's credits. He seems to have made a few movies in the 80's and then worked on other people's shorts in the 2000's. I don't have much expectations for his future work.

This is one of those films that has enough going for it (good cinematography, decent acting) to keep you watching. I generally enjoy the output of films from Australia and for the first hour this in no exception with a few genuinely creepy moments. However, whatever enjoyment is had is quickly shot down in the last quarter of the film with an ending that leaves you scratching your head and wondering why you bothered in the first place. The "supernatural" presence in the film could have been a whole lot more terrifying but in the end....confusion reigns! I am not sure enough viewers will figure out the ending within the natural run time of the film so it's hard to recommend.

Partially investigative drama and halfhearted thriller, The Fear of Darkness is a movie focused on a disturbed character, who may or may not be involved in paranormal activity. Horror movies tend to use this premise, but the main character Sky is neither charismatic nor enigmatically appealing. Despite much effort on delivering scientific based narrative, in which there is abundance of them, it eventually falls on insipid twist without accomplishing much.

For this type of thriller to work, the movie needs intriguing characters or having good chemistry between the cast. It has none of those. Sky (Penelope Mitchell) has two rigid expressions, utterly confused and overblown panic. There's barely any range on acting aside from looking distraught the entire time and it doesn't help establishing any nuance for personality. Meanwhile, the supposedly nurturing psychiatrist Sarah Faithful (Maeve Dermody) is plain and too formulaic of a character to stand out.

The movie moves agonizingly slow, switching from between possible haunting and the psychologist handling the case. There's actually a bulk of the runtime spent panning across bedroom without anything happening, not to mention there are interviews that feel redundant. Script either bombards the audience with heavy pseudo-science mumbling or constant shouting of the same question.

It chooses to bring medications or suggestive trance for the strange behavior, and at times it almost looks like it's going somewhere with these plot devices. However, it only amounts to basic mystery spectacle, lacking any substance for all the flamboyant talk. It does produce good soundtracks overall, they sound like something out of fantasy flicks and admittedly a pleasant surprise.

Only the most avid fans of mystery thriller would find some enjoyment here, because for all the psychological narrative, it only amounts to tedious dialogues.

Another propaganda film about the dangers of "drugs", designed to inspire fear even to touch psychedelic drugs. It would be nice to label propaganda films somehow, so as not to waste time on them.

This film is all "blah blah blah" and nothing happens. The script is dreadful and you can really see they had trouble working out how to end it all with a tedious little twist that you saw coming a mile away. There were just too many scenes were people were talking at each other for what was 10 minutes every scene with a couple of little "frights" (and I do mean LITTLE) in between. By half way through I got bored and started fast forwarding all the walking bits because if people were;t talking they were walking and it all seemed so padded out. The acting was pretty average and even Aaron Pederson who is usually pretty good felt like he'd just walked onto the set and didn't know what film he was in. Honestly, it's all a bit of a dog's breakfast. EXCEPT, the one thing that is actually very good is the cinematography, so obviously they paid someone good to do that. Overall, it's just a pretty looking borefest.