Darkness Falls (Special Edition)

Darkness Falls (Special Edition)
by Jonathan Liebesman

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Movie Reviews of Darkness Falls (Special Edition)

Movie Review: Stay in the light during this underappreciated horror film
Summary: 5 Stars

The opening of the movie is quite good. First, we are told of the legend of Matilda Dixon, a kindly lady of the early nineteenth century who gave children coins for their lost teeth, thereby acquiring her nickname as the tooth fairy. After being burned horribly in a fire, Matilda would only appear at night, wearing a porcelain mask; the town's growing suspicions of this poor woman were eventually inflamed when two kids went missing; a lynch mob took Matilda from her home, exposed her badly burned face for all to see, and hanged her just before the missing boys turned up safe and sound elsewhere. Matilda cursed the town, and the story goes that she comes seeking revenge on the children there when they lose their last baby teeth. Don't peek, parents laughingly warn their children, or else the tooth fairy will kill you One boy did peek, learning that the legends were somehow actually true, and the dramatization of that night's terrible events is capable of generating more than a few creeps within the soul of the viewer. The boy survived that night, but his life was thrown into chaos, costing him his mother, girlfriend, home, and, to some degree, his sanity. Twelve years later, he lives in a world of constant light, knowing that Matilda can only harm him in darkness. When his little girlfriend of old, Caitlyn, calls him out of the blue seeking his help for her little brother, a child suffering from night terrors of the worst kind, he reluctantly comes back home. His desperate effort to help young Michael leads to an inevitable final confrontation between himself and the demon-haunted tooth fairy, and the town of Darkness Falls will never be the same.

This is not a high-budget film, but the overall look and feel of it is impressive. In his first professional directing job, Liebesman snags some major talent, much of it coming from a new generation of professionals. In the interviews included in the Making Of featurette, Liebesman gives those around him what is perhaps too much credit for making this first film of his as successful as it is. Undoubtedly, though he was fortunate indeed to have Stan Winston design his vengeful tooth fairy. I think the creature works very well, both before and after its porcelain mask is removed, and the camera work makes her all the more interesting and disturbing. Much of the action consists of fast-paced movements and visual chaos, leading one to peer deeply into the darkness looking for her; such concentration on the part of the viewer opens up the door for some quick little scares and Boo tactics. The entire cast is superb, particularly Chaney Kley and the lovely Emma Caulfield, but in many ways the very talented child actor Lee Cormie steals the show and does more than anyone else to make this fanciful tale quite believable.

The extras included on the DVD make the movie a much richer experience. The Making Of featurette really increased my appreciation for what I had seen, and the set of deleted scenes has an important contribution to make. Whereas most movie's deleted scenes clearly deserve to have been cut, most of the deleted scenes here add so much more depth to different parts of the story that I question why they were ever deleted in the first place. You get two distinct commentaries of the film, your choice of widescreen or full screen display, and a most interesting documentary about the real life of Matilda Dixon, the tooth fairy of Port Fairy, Australia, upon whose legend this movie was conceived. The whole package is most impressive, and I believe the movie deserves more attention than it has received.

Summary of Darkness Falls (Special Edition)