DARKNESS FALLS (PG-13) *1/2

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman. 85 minutes.

Starring Chaney Kley, Emma Caulfield, Lee Cormie, Grant Piro, and Sullivan Stapleton. Released by Revolution Studios.

Darkness Falls is a truly ludicrous movie with good production values. What else can you say about a film in which the Tooth Fairy, yes the Tooth Fairy, kills people. Not a serial killer named the Tooth Fairy. Not a killer that bites his victims. The Tooth Fairy. According to our nameless narrator, Matilda Dixon was once a woman that gave money in return when children lost their teeth in the small coastal New England town of Darkness Falls. Upon being blamed for the murder of two children, she is hanged, but first places a curse on the town. Somehow Matilda turns into a gigantic, flying creature that bears a porcelain mask and attacks people in the dark.

I am going to stop here and mention something that bothered me throughout the film, other than just the film itself. According to the legend as I shall call it, the Fairy attacks people who look at her. In several scenes, parents put teeth under their children’s pillows and tell them “do not look at her.” Why would parents put teeth under their pillow, endangering their children’s lives? Also, Matilda supposedly only attacks people who have seen her, yet numerous people who have not seen her somehow end up getting killed as well. So, basically, anyone in the town of Darkness Falls can be killed by the Tooth Fairy, regardless of whether or not they have seen her. Wait. Why am I questioning the internal logic of Darkness Falls?

I’ll move forward. The film is chock full of ridiculous scenes that appear to have no purpose but to introduce characters that we know will be picked off. My favorite is the heavyset redneck in the bar that Kyle (Cheney Kley, the hero of the film) gets dragged to upon reentering the town in which his mother was killed by the Fairy years before. For whatever reason, our redneck approaches Kyle, calls him a “freak,” and starts throwing punches, though no real reason is given other than the redneck is just a mean guy. In another scene, Kyle is locked up because the police, of course, believe that he is responsible for the Fairy’s murder spree. They harass him and, once again, we realize that all of these cops will be killed by the Fairy as well. The generic plots and character developments in films such as Darkness Falls rarely take me by surprise being that they are a bit clichéd and, bad pun alert, a tad long in the tooth. Ho, ho, ho.

As I mentioned before, the production values in the film are surprisingly effective. There are honestly quite a few genuine scares throughout the course of the film, most of which comprise characters walking around in the dark and the Fairy popping out when least expected. I admit I jumped a few times, though I did expect the jump before it happened. The special effects involving the Fairy are decent as well, considering that they mostly consist of a masked figure flying back and forth through the air on cables. Even some of the acting in the film is halfway decent. However, this is a fine example of a film that cannot escape the trappings of its plot and storyline. What were the producers thinking in making a film in which the Tooth Fairy kills people? Who thought that a plot such as the one in this film, regardless of the fact that it is a horror film- a genre that allows people to make leaps of faith about fantastical stories- would make for a plausible story? Next I’ll find out that there is a movie in which a kangaroo steals money from people and raps. Oh. Never mind.