Darkness Rising (2017) User Reviews

Darkness Rising: Wait.....what?!

[Platypuschow · 2/10 · 26 August 2017]

When the legend that is Ted Raimi appeared on screen after the opening credits I was awash with a feeling that I was about to watch something good. Sadly however it was not meant to be and I was presented with this realisation within no more than 15 minutes.

You know those over-convoluted horrors which make the rules up as they go along, make no real sense and are generally pretty damn appalling? This is one of those.

A girl returns to her childhood home with her friends, the home where her mother went crazy and tried to kill her when she was a child. Then spooky things begin to go on around the house and it all gets bad, but more for the viewer for the trio.

Messy unlikeable tripe.

The Good:

Looks the part

The Bad:

Makes no sense

Why do the characters keep repeating themselves?

Things I learnt from this movie:

Nothing, in fact if anything I lost brain cells

Torture Rising, Save Yourselves!

[NYAmicas · 3/10 · 8 November 2017]

The scariest thing about this movie is that people actually edited it and thought it was fit for the human public. A horror movie does not have to have a huge budget but I would think that when it comes to the actors the purse strings shouldn't be so tight. Where in tarnation did they get the Madison character? My cat could have put on a better performance. For most of the movie she did this awful sobbing voice whine for about 85% of the movie. Someone mentioned her awful portrayal of a limp and they were spot on, it was like she thought she was doing improv or something. I cant believe her bio states that she went to a performing arts school? The dog in the movie was more convincing than her. The script only made matters worse. Was the writer under character limits? Many lines in the movie were repeated several times in many scenes, I had the captions on so I literally could see that the script was full of the actors repeating themselves and with the same awful intonations each time. The plot is so stupid and could have been forgiven id the movie had hired writers and real actors instead of their neighbors.

I am very much upset I picked this out to watch on my night off. tsk tsk,

Hilarious!

[chroberts-1 · 2/10 · 9 November 2017]

Hilarious! A work of comedic genius! You'll laugh out loud! Wait....what? This is supposed to be a horror movie? Oh. Well. Uh....yeah. This is a terrible horror movie, but the awful acting and nonsensical circumstances will probably make you laugh so....it's got that going for it, which is nice. (gunga-gunga-gulanga)

typical and awful

[vpeou · 1/10 · 30 June 2017]

I don't like to write reviews. But I've watched so many terrible horrors, I feel like I have to say something.

This movie is gawd awful. Everything that is wrong with current horror is in this movie - amplified; false jump scare, forgettable characters with no intelligence spitting nonsensical lines, unnecessary special effects (the house has a Star Trek force field, dude really?), it's annoyingly loud, unimaginative and confusing non-existing story line.

This movie made me physically mad.

I had to reward myself with ice cream having endured a terrible experience called Darkness Rising.

Save yourself the time, skip it.

This wasn't a horror movie, it was a pile of garbage consisting of smaller piles of garbage

[andersdalsgaard · 1/10 · 1 July 2017]

This movie was a struggle to sit through. Before i continue I want to make it clear i'm not gonna trash this movie for the heck of it, i'm usually pretty good at giving movies the benefit of the doubt (I watched "The last air bender" 3 times). I have watched a lot of horror movies, some good, some bad. This was without a doubt one of the worst ones yet.

The story was bad, the acting was bad, the script was bad, the cinematography was bad, the props were bad and, the special effects were bad.

Darkness rising had a total of 2 scary/Creepy scenes with a combined length of 45 seconds (and that's generous). There are so many of the plot devices that just goes unexplained, most of them actually. They try to explain it towards the end of the movie but fail horribly, partly because the acting and script is so bad it's hard to actually listen. Oh, and i have never seen a weaker character in any other movie, about 30-40 min into it, the main character, Madison, starts to cry and LITERALLY does not stop for the next 45 min, every line she has is said crying and she is basically helpless and just screams for her boyfriend, Jake, to help her and the ONE time he asks for her help, she hides (while crying).

Frankly the only good thing about Darkness rising was the credits, great roll speed, great font and font size, great spacing and fantastic spelling.

Please do not waste time and money on this.

So bad I had to set up an account to review it and warn others.

[bloomwithabandon · 1/10 · 21 November 2017]

Where to start? This movie is bad from the time the three main characters appear, bickering on the front step of this abandoned yet dustless haunted house, and the badness continues through oh so many scenes of stupid, breathless, whimpering non-acting that I almost envied the one character who bleaches her eyeballs. I kept watching because I was sure my suffering would be rewarded at some point, but no. At times, the dialogue and hyperventilating was hilarious in a painful way. The movie was derivative without being allusive in any sort of meaningful way. A horrible pastiche of crude inanity.

One rising that falls well short of darkness

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 26 May 2018]

Was drawn into seeing 'Darkness Rising', with as said for many films seen an intriguing if not exactly novel premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

'Darkness Rising', simply put, turned out to be a terrible film and waste of potential with next to no redeeming values and so much done catastrophically wrong. One of the worst films seen in a while, which is saying a lot for somebody who on the most part has been encouraged by their film/television watching and has more often than that been quite generous. Decent idea, horrendous execution.

Lets start with one positive. The scenery is atmospheric, if wasted by the schlocky way the film is shot and particularly edited.

However, the story does feel over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their irritating and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrate. Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The acting is pretty bad to put it lightly and the effects are ropy at best.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling, not to mention far too exposition-heavy, while the pace is uneven, dragging in a lot of the first half, which goes on forever and fails to get going, and never is it exciting after a truly irrelevant beginning. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness and the lack of tension and suspense. Too many elements are introduced, and then dropped, barely explored or don't go anywhere, sometimes even all three.

A lot of the film completely fails to make sense, both in underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations. There is a lot of choppiness and lack of coherence. The threat is poorly used and poses very little threat. The film completely peters out with an ending that felt like an afterthought.

All in all, terrible. 1/10 Bethany Cox

We need the negative stars option for this one

[CTWith3 · 1/10 · 27 November 2017]

I love horror movies. I even watch the ones with low ratings because they can usually be fun no matter how poorly done. But this has to be the worst horror movie I've seen in my life. To say the actors can't act would be too high a praise. To say that the direction was horrible would be too high a praise. To say that ... you get the idea. ... and what character in any move has ever sat down with one of the other potential victims for a psychological introspective or philosophical discussion? So why did I continue watching? Partially because I was waiting for it to get better, and partially because I was paralyzed by the horror of how bad a movie actually made it out of the studio's editing room. We need to be able to give negative star ratings for movies like this one!

Darkness Ri... FAILING

[dblxl · 1/10 · 18 November 2017]

I have on spoiler to note in my review. I very rarely make comments or posting but this movie tipped the scales. I can not believe I watched this. I will never get that time back. But that is my fault as i should of cut it off. The movie made NOOOO sense, the acting was devil awful and the special effects ????. There are parts of the movie that don't make add up. The opening scenes tells you nothing as it is also the closing final clothing scene. The movie makes you want to make your own version of the movie just to attempt to do it better. I truly feel like the director just wanted to get a movie out for the sake of quantity instead of quality. Giving this movie even 1 star is generous. There should be a scale that goes into the negative because that is the only way I would give this movie a 10. This Movie has failed the viewers.

What did I watch? -Contains spoilers!

[lavinecl · 1/10 · 28 October 2018]

I rarely review movies. I should do it more often. Anyway, I watched this with my daughter today. Besides being bored, which is never a good sign, we had to rewind more than once. When we did we found out that we hadn't in fact missed something, the movie just left out whatever the character was reacting to. The opening and closing scene added nothing to the film, explained nothing and honestly served no purpose for the film. There wasn't some big revelation at the end, it was just the opening scene again. Overall this entire movie made very little sense.

Some Non-Euclidean Geometry?

[gavin6942 · 29 June 2017]

Nearly murdered as a child by her mother, a woman (Katrina Law) returns to the (now abandoned) house where her mom went mad.

On its face, the story is relatively simple and minimalistic. A group of three friends break into a house that one of them grew up in, and find that even twenty years later some of the things left behind are intact. Which may seem a bit far-fetched in a world full of urban spelunkers, but just go with it. Underneath this though, is a far more interesting concept.

We are presented the idea that there could be such a thing as architecture-induced homicide. Rather than a house being haunted by spirits, the building itself causes those inside to go insane by the very way it was constructed. Strictly speaking, this is not a new idea. No less a figure than Lovecraft pursued this line of thinking with his "non-Euclidean geometry", and a connection between architecture and evil is suggested in "Ghostbusters II" (itself influenced by Lovecraft). Yet, this remains a rare plot point, and the writer deserves praise merely for attempting it.

The effects are minor, but for the most part well done. There are some decent makeup effects on certain characters' eyes and faces that come across as being simple but quite effective. Maybe not KNB quality, but still better than anything Full Moon has made in the past decade or so. The hazy flashback camera effect is less effective, but if that is the worst that can be said about the film, it still gets a strong passing grade.

The inclusion of Ted Raimi, by far the biggest name attached, is interesting in itself. Based on his absence from IMDb during production, and the way he does not interact with the other characters, it would appear he was added after the rest of the film was completed. Possibly his voice was even dubbed over another actor's at some point. Which is not to say this is a bad thing… if you have the opportunity to put Ted Raimi in your film, you put Ted Raimi in your film. (Speaking with Raimi, he confirms that he was the last one hired and did the role as a favor to his friend Austin reading, the director.)

Overall, the film is fairly strong. There are a few shortcomings as one might expect from a lower budgeted horror picture, but the cleverness of the script overcomes this hurdle. "Darkness Rising" is out now from IFC Films.

Very cool idea - Scary

[joebrielmaier · 9/10 · 9 July 2017]

I found this movie to be interesting in it's use of Lovecraftian themes and I thought the actors did more than hold their own. IFC always puts out solid genre films and this one didn't disappoint. Kind of a new school/old school hybrid with plenty of practical effects and the solid sound and score you would expect from modern horror. I loved seeing Ted Raimi in it as well and I'm curious where the story goes. Keep an open mind and at least one eye open at all times!

Doesn't deserve a 3.3

[pensacolacomputer · 6/10 · 8 November 2017]

Horror movie junkie here. This movie has a limited budget, obviously, and if you are not into horror you should definitely pass. But if you are like I am, you can do much worse. Its pretty much non stop action and horror for most of the movie. Its on Netflix so check it out if you have the time.

Absolute Garbage

[ryanerhart · 1/10 · 17 November 2017]

This movie was so bad it was funny. I have not rated or reviewed a single movie until this piece of hot trash compelled me to take out my laptop and write this. I feel bad for the actors in this movie because they probably will not be able to find work if any agent views this.

The acting was terrible. The movie jumped all over the place. The main guy 'Jake' just screamed swear words the entire time. I feel robbed of my valuable time. Please, PLEASE do not watch this movie.

Stupid

[dottiemaeb · 1/10 · 18 November 2017]

Horrible movie....It was nothing but the word "fuck" being used a thousand times and the constant hyperventilating from the girls. Who are these people that write and produce this garbage?? I'm sure they used the "F" word in every other sentence. Horrible acting. I would pay to not see this stupid movie. Are these actors from porn movies? xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

Darkness-Falling Short

[blamdrum · 1/10 · 25 November 2017]

I had "High" hopes for this movie but within the first 10 minutes, I knew disappointment would prevail. And I was right. The beginning of the movie opens with a completely unrelated scene to anything that preceded it. Not sure what that was about, maybe they finished under-budget and decided what the heck, let's spend some money. In the interest of full disclosure, they may have explained the first 4 minutes of the film in last 20; I don't know I didn't bother watching it. My cat sat on my chest and pointed her ass-end at my face blocking the television set, and to be honest even with a diet of Salmon and Tuna, it was a better watch. The only thing scary about this movie was that I'm sure someone lost a whole lot of money making it. Don't waste your time...adopt a cat instead.

1:21h I want back

[bleedingblue · 2/10 · 2 July 2017]

There is something worse than bad acting and that's bad over acting, which is what you get from the character, Madison from start to finish.

From her constantly over exaggerated crying to her over exaggerated limping, the entire movie is one big wreck. And I'm not exaggerating. Don't waste your time.

See my review of The Hatred

[averagebear · 1/10 · 19 October 2018]

Disjointed storyline, audio was so bad you couldn't hear the "odd noises" over the background music. The demon's voice was so overly distorted you couldn't understand anything when it was trying to explain what the whole ordeal was about. Really was hoping they all died, none of them smart or interesting enough to care. Oh and body count would be six, not five, not that any of it really mattered.

This Movie Made Me Stupider the Longer I Watched It.

[jburtonprod-802-759029 · 1/10 · 9 November 2017]

Why? I mean how? How could ANYBODY approve this non-script, get people to back it with real money and get people to perform in it? I'm usually critical of movies that have no 3rd act. This movie doesn't have a 1st or 2nd either. It does have a prologue and Ivan Raimi was in it which is why I decided to watch it. He's not in the movie. The prologue goes nowhere, btw. Raimi wears a hat and tie evocative of the 40's or 50's making you think 20 years in the future where the main story takes place should be the 60's or 70's. WRONG. It's modern times with the cell phone design and cultural references making sure we know that.

This is an example of 'participation trophy' cinema. This is what comes from children being made to feel they're special when they don't achieve so they grow up thinking they can do anything when they are totally unqualified and below average and stayed that way because their parents didn't have the fortitude to teach them that to accomplish something of merit you must WORK HARD.

I really felt bad for the actors. They were obviously trying very hard to sell this ridiculous attempt at a horror movie but the dialogue is just putrid. The setup is clichéd and ridiculous. And how many abandoned houses do you know of that have linen on the bed, closets full of clothes and kitchen drawers full of silverware? The cousin goes to get one the character's mother's leather jacket out of the closet and it has a post 2000 design and looks like it's never been worn. And no dust... ANYWHERE. This is the level of stupidity this movie operates in.

There is no making sense of the story because the author doesn't know what the hell is going on, either. Nothing makes sense and it's clear the author thinks all horror movies are about are putting scary scenes together. There's no need for an actual story. NONE of the scenes are technically sound enough to make them scary. The special effects are horrid and not in a good way. Amateurish is the word that comes to mind.

There's a particularly terrible scene where the cousin explains what's going on and the director has her making jerky movements to approximate the video effect seen in the remake of House on Haunted Hill and countless other modern horror movies. Like I said, this must've been a tough gig.

If you value your brain cells, STAY AWAY!!!

I tried to like it....

[springreader · 2/10 · 27 September 2018]

I had hopes for this movie and I know a lot of horror movies leave you hanging and questioning, but there were just to many questions by the time the credits rolled. I feel like the writers weren't sure what they wanted and just threw stuff together. I know the actors from previous roles and liked them in those roles, so originally I was excited to see them, however that excitement died out....I wish I could like this movie, but I can't.

BAD, BAD OH SO VERY BAD

[albatex · 11 September 2019]

Cannot even convey how horribly lame this production was. Gotta give em credit tho, they managed to find three actors equal to the task put before them. Did I mention, it's really .....bad. Does not contain "spoilers"- not possible, really bad.

No

[duffineyjevan · 1/10 · 11 November 2017]

I just need to know what the beginning and ending had to do with the whole movie? Why show people way back then, to present day then go all the way back then if it had nothing to do with it? If your looking for a quick movie that will get you thinking this is it. But if you want a good movie don't watch Netflix originals

Very cool. Big idea with a small budget

[snowwhite99 · 9/10 · 11 July 2017]

So I watched this because I really liked the poster and trailer. But -- I also read some reviews which made me hesitant to rent it, but I try to make it a policy that I don't let people that I don't know cloud my own experience. I have to say, I am not sure why anyone didn't really enjoy this. Its a haunted house movie but not. An evil possession movie but not your typical demon story. It felt like it wanted to go Hellraiser but didn't have the money. That to me is a good idea!!! It was a slow burn and then took off like a bat out of hell. The girl that played Izzy was really amazing. Katrina Law is her name and I am sure people will really like her in this. I also can't believe no one mentioned the gross eyeball scene! That is a cool "holy s!" moment.

For me its got a good looking lead, a funny wing man in Izzy, and a weird mythology that didn't tell me everything - which I appreciate. The ending does have a lot of exposition but its from Izzy and she is really good so I didn't mind.

It was worth the money on iTunes.

Meh!

[ejamc · 6/10 · 14 November 2017]

This movie wasn't very good, but it wasn't horrible either! There were some good ideas, like the whole law of fives thing and the dog that was at every possible exit, but the overall feel was just goofy! I mean, the way the possessed people walked was so jerky I couldn't take them very seriously!

Great title got me into the seat, but the greatness ends with the title.

[subxerogravity · 4/10 · 3 July 2017]

It's a corny horror film but I could not help but to root for the filmmakers, just impress that they were able to do 90 mins with what seems to be a weak story.

It was pretty corny, but I must admit, I did like it on a filmmaker level I'm very impress with what the filmmakers did with what little they had, which was just three people in a house for an hour in a half, battling literally the house that seem to be some sort of spirit vs. the house actually being hunted. As far as horror movies go this will not top anyone's list of even decent horror films. It was crappy and so not scary. Oh, but there are one or two "that's messed up" moments that were impressive, but not enough to make the grade. Not even the unneeded cameo from b-movie legend, Ted Rami could put this movie on a top ten list. So B minus for effort, but I would skip.

http://cinemagardens.com