The Dark

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Movie
German title The Dark
Original title The Dark
Country of production Great Britain , Germany
original language English , Welsh
Publishing year 2005
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director John Fawcett
script Stephen Massicotte, Simon Maginn
production Paul WS Anderson , Robert Kulzer , Jeremy Bolt
music Edmund Butt
camera Christian Sebaldt
cut Chris Gill
occupation
  • Sean Bean : James
  • Maria Bello : Adelle
  • Richard Elfyn: Rowan
  • Maurice Roëves: Dafydd
  • Abigail Stone: Ebrill
  • Sophie Stuckey: Sarah

The Dark is a British horror film from 2005 based on the novel "Sheep" by Simon Maginn. However, most of the story has been changed, so that a comparison between film and novel is hardly possible. The tagline of the film is: One living for one dead!

action

In the hope of reuniting her young family, Adelle from New York travels to Wales with her daughter Sarah . Her husband James lives there in a remote farmhouse on the coast. Shortly after arrival, fate strikes. Sarah disappears without a trace while walking on the beach. An immediate search remains unsuccessful.

As James continues to search for his missing daughter, Adelle is haunted by visions that reveal her worst fears. It turns out that the property has a dark past that affects the present. An argument she had with Sarah before she left and which led to her daughter attempting suicide is also very troubling for her. Sarah's words: “I hate you! I'm moving in with my father! ”They pursue. When little Ebrill suddenly appears, Adelle senses that this mysterious girl knows where her daughter is. She uncovered an old Welsh legend that a dead man returns when a living man sacrifices himself. Ebrill, too, was brought back to life by her father, the "shepherd", when he, the village priest, caused almost all followers to die by jumping off the cliff. But when the girl came back she was different. The sheep began to die. The father no longer recognized his daughter. In order to drive out the evil, the "black", he carried out several trepanations on the tied girl with exorcistic intent . Ebrill couldn't stand this and eventually knocked her own father off a cliff to his death after Dafydd, a boy who survived the village community's mass suicide, pity her. Now the girl, who died a long time ago, does not want to go back to the afterlife, but to stay with James, whom she asks to become her "dad". Finally, Adelle promises her that if she goes back to the afterlife with her, no one will have to die again. Ebrill is on the verge of throwing himself off the rock into the water, but James reaches the scene in time and stops her from doing so. Desperate, Adelle plunges down with Ebrill in her arms. In Anwynn, the mystical realm of the dead, she meets her daughter Sarah, who, however, has undergone an uncanny transformation and is now performing a trepanation on Adelle together with the "shepherd". Nevertheless, she manages to bring the girl back into life. But she remains trapped in the afterlife with Ebrill . Sarah returns to her father's house and then begins her journey home to New York after learning that her mother has died. At the end, you see Adelle, after unsuccessful attempts to make herself noticeable to Sarah in this world, go to Ebrill, crying in bed, in the afterlife and lie down with her. As a promise to be her mother now, she holds the girl's hand comfortingly.

reception

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has a rating of 5.4 / 10 and the audience reviews say it was shallow, but acceptable as a filler. At Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 33% and a user rating of 31%.

The TV magazine Prisma considers The Dark to be a "typical" haunted house "story with the usual shock effects", whose novel, however, deals with the Welsh horror myth "much more skillfully". What remains are "good actors [...] in a genre flick who want to swim on the wave of similar flicks like" The Ring "or" The Grudge "." Ultimately, the editors distribute two out of five possible stars.

In a balanced review, the online film magazine Celluloid Dreams comes to a damning verdict for a horror film:

"'The Dark' is an interesting 'The Ring' free rider who lacks the most important thing: tension."

- Celluloid Dreams

The judgment of the Cinema.de editorial team is clearer and more pointed :

“[...] at the latest when the zombie sheep appear, [it] becomes simply ridiculous. The clichéd mix of elements from "Friedhof der Kuscheltiere", "The Fog" and "When the gondolas bear mourning" offers some beautiful landscapes that could well serve to promote tourism. The ghosts that the film calls, however, would have better stayed in the sheepfold. "

- Cinema.de

The Frankfurter Rundschau deals with the film in a little more detail and agrees with the general tenor:

“But director John Fawcett lacks the narrative skills and the production company apparently lacks the money to develop the plot. At high speed Fawcett guides the viewer through a flood of events that rush past you largely without consequences. The quick cuts can hardly hide the gaps in the action and the staging repeatedly proves to be extremely simple. [...] If no depth is desired, none can arise. Every now and then, however, [Maria Bello] has horror written on her face, which is no wonder with the punishment fantasy that "The Dark" turns out to be. "

In a very long and extensive review, which also goes into the business context and very benevolently emphasizes the role of Constantin Film as well as the references of many participants, Treffpunkt-Kritik.de summarizes in the first paragraph that it is regrettable that the film adaptation of the novel had “not as many surprises” ready, “despite a solid implementation with a consistently good atmosphere on the clichés of the genre” and came up with a finale “that is so far from this world that you as a viewer almost try is to close your eyes so as not to spoil the previous impression of the film. ” a. still touched on that Maria Bello "in the present dubbed version suffers most from the German voice", the two child actresses "do not act quite as convincingly" as Bello, Sean Bean and Maurice Roëves and it is technically - especially with the camera work - it "however Hardly anything to complain about ”, while the editing“ seems unnecessarily nested ”.

In contrast, Peter Uehling from the Berliner Zeitung comes to a fundamentally positive judgment:

“Amazingly, however, [author Stephen Massicotte] succeeds in tinkering a coherent story out of it, which works as a popcorn cinema as well as a chamber play about dysfunctional family relationships. [...] This chamber play is mainly carried by Christian Sebaldt's expressively moving camera. "

- Peter Uehling : Berliner Zeitung

Web links

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  1. Age rating for The Dark . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ^ The Dark (2005). Internet Movie Database , accessed November 25, 2017 .
  3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411267/usercomments
  4. ^ The Dark (2005). Rotten Tomatoes , accessed November 26, 2017 .
  5. The Dark - Trailer, review, pictures and information about the film. In: prisma.de . January 26, 2006, accessed November 26, 2017 .
  6. The Dark. (No longer available online.) In: Celluloid-Dreams.de. December 22, 2005, archived from the original on December 1, 2017 ; Retrieved November 26, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.celluloid-dreams.de
  7. Editor: The Dark. In: cinema.de . August 25, 2015. Retrieved November 26, 2017 .
  8. VO: THE DARK - Once Beyond and Back , in: Frankfurter Rundschau , February 13, 2006 THE DARK - Once Beyond and Back ( Memento from February 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ).
  9. Jens Adrian: Meeting Point: Criticism - The Dark (2005). In: treffpunkt-kritik.de. January 29, 2006, accessed November 26, 2017 .
  10. Peter Uehling: Fear of the sea - sheep horror to be amazed: "The Dark" , in: Berliner Zeitung , January 26, 2006 Fear of the sea - sheep horror to be amazed: "The Dark" ( Memento from February 12th 2006 in the Internet Archive ).