Darker Than Night (2014) User Reviews

Well, yeah... OK

[carlesmiquel · 4/10 · 24 September 2014]

I may firstly say that I love some of the people who appear in this film, and one of the actors is someone I love dearly since childhood. They've had pretty heavy roles in some of the most controversial Mexican series of recent times. Their acting is usually very good, but it's a very different thing to make a long-haul telenovela to a proper feature.

Said that, this film revolves around a house, a cat and a bunch of girls and a weird lady that try to make us feel uncomfortable. The problem is that they don't succeed on the task. And that's supposed to be the very raison d'etre for a horror movie. If you can recall acting as contrived and stiff as the old lady's, well... I have to pry my brain open to remember one, apart from some very bad comedies.

Kudos for the location, cinematography and 3D. The post is superb. Lighting, audio and props, top notch... what you'd expect from a much more expensive film.

Thumbs down to the story-telling and the over-the-top acting. These girls could be very nuanced and subtle in some other films, but here... well, yeah, OK. Eréndira Ibarra may be one of those rare gold nuggets that needs a film just for her -this wasn't the one. And I KNOW for sure, she needs a film of her own, because she's a fantastic actress. Here, she's just the cussing tough one.

I guess the main problem is all the characters are fleshed out of their own stories and little is revealed to have the time to connect, empathize or feel for them even a slight connection. That puts them out of the way as you can concentrate more on the house, the furniture, the props... which... well, all of them are beautifully captured in glorious 3D.

So, in the end, they've got a very polished result, visually, but without bones to lay your teeth on.

Dismal

[TdSmth5 · 3/10 · 1 October 2014]

A girl inherits her aunt's mansion. She used to live there as a kid when she was adopted by the aunt when her parents and sister died. She later was sent to a boarding school. So she does what anyone else would do--move into the place with her three friends but not her boyfriend.

There she's welcomed by the creepy and ultra-formal housekeeper. The only request by the aunt is the the niece take care of Becket the black cat. One of the girls has a pet ferret that doesn't get along with Becket. One night the ferret appears dead and the girl blames Becket and eventually will take vengeance.

That's when things go awry. The mansion is about as stereotypical as it gets. Like a cheesy haunted house done by Disney. It looks large on the outside with lots of windows but all the rooms are tiny and dark. No sunlight gets in and even when people turn in the lights (which they rarely do), it's still pitchblack. There are spider webs everywhere, dust, mysterious rooms, old junk, pictures, a huge painting of the aunt, etc. So at this point everyone starts seeing, hearing, and dreaming scary stuff. The girl grows distant from her boyfriend and when they throw the lamest housewarming party ever, one of the other girls seduces him, even though or maybe because she's involved with the ugliest guy ever. More and more they start freaking out until we find out what exactly happened at the house years ago when the aunt was young and how that's similar to what is going in the present.

Darker Than Night is unfortunately as bad a movie as the reviews and ratings indicate. It's got very little going for it: a cool title for a horror movie that's even more effective in Spanish; the cute Zuria Vega and the stunning Ona Casamiquela, and the performance by Margarita Sanz. That's it. The story is nothing special. And I haven't seen nor care to see the original. The characters are irrelevant, you couldn't care less about these people. For one hour and twenty minutes nothing particularly relevant happens aside from noises. And then when things get hectic it's not particularly impressive either. I saw the 2D version and I didn't see anything worthwhile for 3D. They could have done more with the idea, I'm not sure why they had such low aspirations.

below-standard

[Oslo_Jargo · 3/10 · 26 April 2015]

Take a bunch of boring, spoiled, know-nothing young women, give them an inheritance, place them inside a fake-looking studio "house" where nothing happens for nearly 2 hours, and what do you get? Well, this film, which is tedious.

The attempted use of the "cat, dead aunt and the housekeeper" to scare the audience goes on forever. The lighting of the film ruins the atmosphere, so does the fake CGI exterior of the house. The acting is below-standard and dull.

The lighting of the film ruins the atmosphere in the end, so does the fake CGI aunt in the house.

The film is tedious, again.

It is a remake of "Más negro que la noche" (1975) which was average, but is included on a TV set a girl is watching in this Director Henry Bedwell version. The 1975 film is directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada, who did "Even the Wind Is Afraid" (1968) and "The Book of Stone" (1969) in his trilogy of horror, all equally average and dull.

Filled with clichés and boring

[alanramirez1 · 2/10 · 10 March 2015]

I didn't had huge expectations for this movie, because Mexican horror films usually suck. Being a Mexican, I hate Mexican horror/suspense films, because one thing they don't have is horror. And with "Más Negro Que la Noche", a remake from an old Mexican classic, I prove my point again. I missed it when it was on theaters, and it seemed really good, but I'm thankful I didn't paid more than 30 pesos to rent it. This movie is full of horror clichés, but the movie takes these clichés to another level: A haunted house that looks like something horrible happened there, four unlikeable lead characters that are molded with the typical personalities; the actresses acted like it was a theater play instead of a horror movie, they overreact too much, and the scared faces or screaming were too fake, seems like they didn't even tried. 90 of the 100 minutes of the movie are so boring. Nothing happens during the whole movie, the script is so messy and forced, you wait for at least one character to die but nothing happens. All the "horror" you get is noises, random stuff moving, and a very annoying score that was all over the top, and it attempts to scare you but fails miserably. If you know the Mexican horror movie formula, you'll predict that this movie includes ghosts, a black cat, and an old lady that acts as poorly as the young cast. I recommend you to avoid this one! You'll lose 100 minutes of your time.

How many Lives I Loss Watching This Crap? 7

[rodrigoalderete · 1/10 · 9 December 2014]

This movie must be rated 0/10. 4.5 is very high. Well ¿Shall we begin? This Movie is a remake from the 1975 Classic "Mas negro que la noche" a very thrilling story with creepy elements you enjoy and never tired of watching over and over, after decades. But,Whats this new version is so poor? Let me do a list:

The character names: in this version was switched, changed. The story: was changed at all for a nonsense crap. The music: cheap. The wardrobe: worse ever seen in a film. Hair Styles: Even worse. Acting: very soap opera Directing: the weakest ever The story line: MESSY DRIVE Horror Level: Cero IN CONCLUSION: THE FILM MAKERS IDEAS ARE POOR AND CHEAP. THIS REMAKE SHOULD BE ERASED FOR HISTORY.

Could this be the holy grail of bad "movies"?

[aharmas · 1/10 · 28 September 2014]

I am hoping IMDb incorporates negative numbers for ratings because we had our share of really terrible films this year: "Bad Neighbors" and "This is Where I Leave" jump to the front of the list, but this film along with "The Wolf of Wall Street", "American Hustle", and "The Hurt Locker" deserve their own special section, and a rating of one is just much more than they should get.

Where do we begin with this cinematic disaster? For starters, a big budget doesn't guarantee quality or talent. Ed Wood did wonders with nothing. At least he had imagination, and there have been a series of films throughout the last thirty years that have taken hand held cameras and used the talents of their writers and actors to give us some worthy entertainment. What is so sad is to see the waste of resources in films like these. Because that's the obvious part here: There was money to burn, and if anyone got burned it was us because we were led to think there was something worth watching somewhere inside this mess.

First, we have a bunch of utterly talentless people "acting" in front of the camera. There is no way anyone in the audience can believe these people are even playing stupid. They look as lost as the audience because we can't figure out what is going on. If lots of special effects, mostly relegated to flashes of light, and plenty of creaking noises and crashing furniture is supposed to create an atmosphere of doom and darkness, we get hints of it, but after a while it is completely neutered by the abysmal performance and direction. Once in a while we see this furry thing from hell (and we're there, not the characters) jump around, supposedly to frighten us because it is not a regular cat, and he's coming back get them (not soon enough, mind you).

Second, there are some gorgeous sets in here, and I wonder how many of them truly are sets, or it might have been some old, run down mansion that they just decided to use for sets or background. It does look spooky, and sadly, it only makes everything else about the terrible film, sub-zero performances, and missing script look even worse than they are, and they're terrible.

Third, there is nothing wrong with dropping a few curses around, but when every sentence has one, I begin to wonder if the "writers" are even capable of thinking beyond concepts or simple monosyllables. As far as I understood, these people belong to the upper crust of society, and they're so foul mouthed, I was wondering exactly what they're supposed to represent. This is one of the worst problems in the film. No one is worth saving. I was hoping the maid would slash their throats in the first five minutes because if there was any filth here is all of the rich kids who stupidly do everything they can to become targets of "BECKET"!!! All we are given are drug addicts, spoiled brats, foul mouthed sluts, drunks, mentally impaired friends, and who knows what else they were trying to portray. This is a problem since there is no villain we can make any sense of, and there is no one who earns a bit of our support. The first thing they do is mistreat the lawyer and the maid.

In addition to the lack of any talent, comparisons arise from the start. "The Orphanage" pops into mind immediately, and such amazing film becomes even better because the themes of family, destruction, and angry spirits are supposed to be buried somewhere in this horrible collection of wasted resources. Then we have "The Others" and their wonderful portrayal of lost souls, and we can continue with the list of predecessors such "The Legend of Hell House", "The Haunting", and even mini seconds of "The Exorcist", "Alien", and other films that honor the genre.

Unfortunately, this is not the case here, just a frivolous attempt from a group of "performers, film makers, and producers" who found a way to finance a free vacation to some exotic location and left us, feeling cheated, angry, and in worse shape than BECKET!!! Remember, Becket came back and won the battle... just remember. We will up that one and just walk away and leave stranded next time you try to pull another one of these sad projects.

Bad remake

[sagashop70 · 1/10 · 10 June 2018]

This movie is a remake of a 1975 film directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada. The original is by far much better than this 2014 version. The new version is full of bad acting, bad dialogues and lots of clichés. It's a horror movie, but you end up laughing watching it. I watched years ago the original, and I do believe this new version was a complete failure. The sad part is that good actor work in this film, such as Margarita Sanz, she is an extraordinary actress, but in this film, her talent is completely wasted.

Now I'm going to have nightmares

[GomezAddams666 · 1/10 · 7 May 2015]

This piece of film has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

The atmosphere is supposed to be gloomy and dark comes out as a bad 90s Marilyn Manson video, the "goth" look of the house which I can only assume was intentional to make it look "creepy" was dreadful, the performances were amazingly bad, the writing, the directing seemed like a mix of Tim Burton and Uwe Boll. I bet if they gave Becker (the cat) the camera he would have done a better job.

The actresses were terrible, maybe they figured out how bad the movie was going to be and decided to phone in it, based on this movie no cast and crew should be allowed to make a movie ever again.

The background story never appeared in the original, in fact nothing was like the original. If you're going to make a remake of a movie why not stick to the original source? And if you're going to make an original film why then use the name of the film that might have inspired it but you don't intend to show any respect at all for? It is sad that there are these directors that try to be cute by "modernizing" stories like this and think they know better than the original directors, they should go find a job directing a pornographic film instead because they have no idea how to make a good movie.

And the writer wrote this filth is not a fan of the original movie, this was an absolute disgrace, an appalling disgrace to Mexican Cinema and Cinema in general. In fact, he should be deported from Mexico and no country that respects itself would let this talent- less "writer" a job ever again in the industry.

Oh and showing on TV the movie you're supposed to be remaking is astoundingly stupid, just saying.

The original version was creepy and entertaining but somewhere along the lines the writer of this movie decided to just toss away the story, the characters, the background... pretty much everything. This is definitively an insult to Taboada and the audience.

If you love Mexican Cinema and/or Cinema in general, please refrain yourself from watching this.

Lots to like but weak on specifics

[nebilcs-168-165298 · 7/10 · 23 January 2016]

I hadn't seen the original so judged this on its own merits. And there's a lot to like. Firstly, the location was excellent, the house setting effectively creepy and the camera work patient and building. Secondly the acting was really pretty good, these were much more believable, self-assured and 'real' girls rather than Hollywood b- movie screamers. The pace of the film was measured, not frantic, the mood claustrophobic and cheap 'jump scares' were kept to a minimum.

So to the weaknesses. A few times I'd wonder why they just didn't all just stay together for the first few nights or indeed why the friends just didn't leave, car or no car. Becker the cat simply wasn't unnerving enough, it looked bored and given the time may have opted to throw itself into the pool. Overall though the biggest weakness was that it just wasn't scary. The setting could have been used a lot more, more creakiness, more effects more subtle than just a blurred figure in the background or a menacing hand.

On balance then I found it engaging and interesting, it isn't the best of the genre but represents a good effort with high production values. If it detracts from the original then that's a shame because there was probably enough quality here to come up with an alternative new plot.

Getting in

[kosmasp · 5/10 · 13 May 2020]

Getting a big house is one thing, getting it with baggage a completely different. And no I'm not talking about the house being fully "equipped" ... there are other sinister forces. This is a horror movie and decent one at that overall. Not really great, because it is flawed (cliches and all that), but one that you can watch.

Better horror movies out there (no pun intended) and worse too. This was nicely paced, very well shot and had really good production values. Acting is decent too overall, if you don't mind the stupid things characters do to progress the story ...

I great little spooky house affair, with plenty of atmosphere.

[lamentconfig · 8/10 · 25 November 2022]

I have to be the voice of descent here. I have not seen the original, so I have no idea how this remake honors its source, but as a standalone film I thought it was great - within the genre. Suspenseful, creepy, and the old housekeeper Avengelina is just a delight. With this being a Mexican film, and so many of its cast having started in telenovelas, I was a little worried when I read so many reviews talking about the overacting. Maybe i'm growing used to Latin American acting, but I really have not noticed any. If you like creepy movies with a few jump-scares and a lot of atmosphere, this one is definitely worth a shot. I will add that I watched it in the original Spanish so I have no idea how good or bad the English translation and dubbing are.

BECKER IS A SPECIAL CAT

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 18 May 2019]

Greta inherits a house "that holds many secrets" when her creepy old aunt dies. She has one thing, just one thing she has to do and that is take care of Becker, a long haired grumpy black cat who never took on a scary face. Greta goes up there with her BFF Pilar whose brother she dates. She also takes along Maria and Vicky who both commit deeds that would hurt Greta.

We discover that Greta had a younger sister and parents who used to stay there, although we don't know what happened to them. We do find out things about the dead aunt, whose spirit doesn't seem a bit at rest. All the people have their own individual haunting and once Becker fails his swim test, things come apart in the house that is always dark and has bad wiring.

The movie seemed fine for a rental. It is typical haunted house stuff. All the girls kept wanting to leave, but then didn't. The background information could have been better explained. Good Soundtrack.

Graeat and Tasty

[movieguardian-1998 · 9/10 · 24 August 2014]

I was really surprised about all the bad reviews about the movie all over Mexico's press and social networks, so I was in Mexico and I said: what the hell... So I went to the see the movie. I really enjoyed as far as I wasn't expecting things to happen. I had fun, got scared a couple of times. The idea of A Hunted Mexican Mansion really caught me... I found every character lovely in their on way. But there was something that didn't make sense to me, why is everybody so upset about it? I'm not an expert myself but a very huge fan of horror movies, I know a lot about Taboada's job and found this version of Mas Negro que la Noche amazing. What I really got me thinking on writing a review, was the truly emotional and over the top comments. And icon movie such as the original, was just that... An icon. There's nothing more. If you really take the time to analyze it, is both boring and the worst acting performances ever. But I got the point, is the Mexican Horror icon that can't be touched. I've read other comments on the IMDb and I found particular disappointing that even the actress's hair-done (that curly look) even takes more words that the movie review it self. The move is great and way better than the original. Is quite funny that a younger generation can be thrilled by a 40 year old so boring horror classic. Get real. I recommend this version and the 3D option a lot! Cool experience.

Top Notch Trash!

[thalassafischer · 8/10 · 20 March 2023]

It may seem to some viewers that I am over-inflating this film but I genuinely love it despite its flaws. I loved Mas negro que la noche in the theater, and I have since watched it several times after I purchased it for home viewing. As a fan of giallo films and 1970s horror I thought this 2014 effort was absolutely chef's kiss and I have never regretted buying it.

I also think it is a vast improvement on the 1975 original (it's fine, you can throw things at me now, but I won't apologize).

Darker Than Night is a glossy, action-packed but silly haunted house thriller that abuses all the CGI. I typically hate when filmmakers replace talent with beautiful people and questionable technology but this flick is just pure fun to me, I consider it a "comfort film."