Flimsy horror film sends the Tooth Fairy on a killer rampage

By Jack Garner
Gannett News Service

'Darkness Falls' PG-13 (Language and moments of fright) 85 minutes

According to "Darkness Falls," the beloved Tooth Fairy is a purveyor of violence against children.

And by the way, Darkness Falls isn't a statement — it's the town's name. I figure folks who choose to call their town Darkness Falls already have problems.

In a prologue that takes longer to set up than the film itself, Matilda Dixon is a sweet old lady in the town, circa 1850. She's sweet to the local kids — and loves to give them coins when they present her with their baby teeth.

But Matilda's luck turns bad. She's brutally scarred in a fire, and she's falsely accused of murder when two kids are reported missing. Accordingly, she's hanged for murder.

But before the noose tightens, she lays a curse on Darkness Falls: She'll claim the lives of any young child who loses his or her last baby tooth and looks at her in the dark when she arrives bedside.

I'm immediately suspicious of any horror flick that establishes so many rules right from the get-go.

The bulk of the movie takes place today — as former and current residents of Darkness Falls deal with this crazy legacy. There's a now-grown Kyle (Chaney Kley) who has lived every moment in the light since a near-fatal encounter with the ghost 15 years earlier. There's Caitlin (Emma Caulfield), his former girlfriend. And there's Caitlin's 9-year-old brother, Michael (Lee Cormie), the Tooth Fairy's most recent target.

"Darkness Falls" offers a ripped-off blend of the "Halloween" franchise and vampire stories. Matilda's ghost wears a hockey mask and she can only wreak havoc in the dark.

As horror flicks go, "Darkness Falls" is fairly mild — depending more on standard fright tricks, like a jumping cat or creepy shadows, than violence. It's a lot like presidential politics: There is no gore.

But there is a lot of stupid, implausible behavior. For example, in the big finale, our heroes rush into a nearby lighthouse and immediately know how to work it — where to pour in the fuel, how to turn on the revolving engine and switch on the giant light. They even know how to repair it when it fails.

And, by the way, if looking at the ghost leads to doom, why don't the potential victims simply wear blindfolds when they go to bed?

"Darkness Falls" marks the directorial debut of South African filmmaker Jonathan Liebesman, who does what he can with the flimsy material.

The film's chief downfall is the script, which plays like a bad comic book. (No surprise: One of the three credited writers is Joe Harris, a veteran Marvel Comics writer.)

"Darkness Falls" ... on its face.