84 min.
Release Date: June 12, 2020 (Digital & On Demand)
In less amateurish hands with less of a lizard-brained script, “Darkness Falls” might have been competent and somewhat watchable as a cop thriller. As is, this is an often ugly, leaden and thoroughly perfunctory piece of work. Director Julien Seri and writer Giles Daoust were clearly aiming for the next “Manhunter” or “Se7en,” but Seri is no Michael Mann or David Fincher. With overcooked performances, derisively awful dialogue, and ludicrous leaps in logic to a forehead-slapping degree, the film instead plays like a noir parody. Unfortunately, “Darkness Falls” isn’t even entertaining enough to work as camp.
A father-and-son pair of serial killers (Gary Cole, Richard Harmon) strike again, breaking into a woman’s home, force-feeding her sleeping pills, slitting her wrists in the bathtub and disguising the murder as a suicide. That woman happens to be the wife to LAPD homicide detective Jeff Anderson (Shawn Ashmore) and mother to their young son, Frankie (Judah Mackey). Six months later, Anderson is a broken, wallowing shell of his former self, watching his former partner (Daniella Alonso) become his superior and making his mother (Lin Shaye) be more of a parent to his son. Will Anderson crawl out of his hole and finally put a stop to these women-hating killers?
After opening on the unpleasant, exploitative “suicide” murder of the protagonist’s wife, “Darkness Falls” tediously trudges through its rote procedural plot, until things just get overwrought. In one laughably bad scene, Anderson obsesses over finding his wife’s killers and tries to think like them before more women are found dead. By supposedly putting himself in their shoes, the cop’s process involves wallpapering his old apartment (where his wife was murdered) with crime scene photos and leads. Once his former partner and new captain comes knocking and rejects his theory without any concrete evidence, Anderson throws a tantrum and the two proceed to have a screaming match. Not helping matters, there is some very funny dialogue—all of it unintentional—that not even a seasoned thespian could sell (for example, “You need to get back in the saddle!”). It also takes a lot for a film to be labeled “misogynistic,” even for one about killers who claim to hate women, but there is more than a sleazy whiff of misogyny here. When the film's most prominent female character is done away with, it's not a ballsy move but an offensive one.
Shawn Ashmore has proven his talent before in other projects that him leading a film shouldn’t be out of the question. However, it’s never a good sign when the nicest compliment to be given is that he’s at least more convincing than the badly miscast Chris Klein playing an Interpol agent in “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.” As Jeff Anderson, Ashmore never makes the character accessible enough to feel his grief, looking daft when emoting and relying on melodramatic histrionics as if he has never performed a crying scene in front of a camera before. A chillingly calm Gary Cole relishes another bad-guy role, but it’s too one-dimensional to be interesting, and Lin Shaye can always improve a film with her mere presence as Concerned Mom, however, the material here works against her.
“Darkness Falls” is a pulpy B-movie that takes itself as seriously as a heart attack, but it’s so clunky and artless in the delivery that taking most of it seriously is impossible. There is exactly one stylish flourish in the entire film, a stakeout montage conveying days passing as Anderson sits awake in his car, and even that earns a chuckle or two. While director Julien Seri probably didn’t set out to make a janky motion picture, it’s shocking that the final edit includes the supposedly best takes. The climactic brawl between the cop and one of the killers is so blatantly choreographed that one is surprised the make-up department even bothered with the Karo syrup. It’s one thing when a movie is terribly clichéd and over-the-top, but it’s another when it’s not even terrible in a redeemably fun way.
Grade: D
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