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Dom Robinson reviews
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: CDR 33676
- Running time: 82 minutes
- Year: 2003
- Pressing: 2003
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: 4 languages available
- Subtitles: 14 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.40:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Deleted Scenes, Making Of featurette, “The Legend of Matilda Dixon” featurette,Storyboard comparisons, Trailers, Two audio commentaries
Director:
- Jonathan Liebesman
(Darkness Falls, Genesis and Catastrophe, Immortals)
Producers:
- John Fasano, John Hegeman, William Sherak and Jason Shuman
Screenplay:
- John Fasano, James Vanderbilt and Joseph Harris
Music:
- Brian Tyler
Cast:
- Kyle Walsh: Chaney Kley
Caitlin Greene: Emma Caulfield
Michael Greene: Lee Cormie
Larry Fleishman: Grant Piro
Officer Matt Henry: Sullivan Stapleton
Young Kyle: Joshua Anderson
Young Caitlin: Emily Browning
Darkness Fallsproves that it’s not only in the current climate that ‘trial by media’can happen, in that innocent people are tried and found guilty in the eyesof the stupid who have no evidence to back it up, so it’s understandable that150 years ago Matilda Dixon put a curse on the town of “Darkness Falls”,after the population put her to death.
Her crime? She used to give a gold coin to any kids who lost a tooth, earningher nickname “The Tooth Fairy”, but when two kids disappeared one nightthey figured it must be her fault, and since her face was scarred from a badfire in the house, one time, and couldn’t be exposed to the light, you canexactly just how they made her last hours on Earth even more painful. No doubtshe made things worse by subsequently creating the Dixons chain of shops,complete with their know-nothing staff and its similarly pointless and braindeadoffshoots, PC World, Currys and The Link… but I digress.
The film begins with the Tooth Fairy paying a spooky visit to a young KyleWalsh. He loses his last tooth – the point at which all havoc is allowed tobreak loose, and before he can count the money under his pillow, doors slamshut, his Mum goes to investigate, she winds up in a fatal way and he’s put intocare after the townsfolk have assumed it’s all his fault.
Fast-forward 12 years later and Kyle’s (Chaney Kley) then-childhoodcrush, Caitlin Greene (Emma Caulfield) has a younger brother sufferingthe same night terrors and so seeks help, but Kyle has other problems in thatpeople still think he killed his mum and when they confront him and wind updead as well, the blinkered fools put two and two together to come up with five,or at least the most plausible possibility.
If you want something to show off the speakers in your system in a subtlefashion, with the way ol’ TF’s voice filters round them then this is worth alook, but while it was too short to get bored (the last 10 of the 82 minutes arereserved for the titles), there really is nothing new to this FreddyKreuger-style rip-off with people shrieking a lot at each other and if you canfind better things to watch, aside from the gorgeous Emma Caulfield (seeabove-right), then do so.
The film is presented in the original 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen and there’sno problems with this as it spends a lot of time in the dark and copes verywell indeed, given the number of DD5.1 soundtracks and subtitle languageson the disc.
Soundwise, there’s nice use of SFX around the speakers as the Tooth Fairycomes to visit and there’s DD5.1 sound and dialogue in English, Hungarian,Spanish and Russian.
For the extras, there’s not a massive amount even if you are a fan of thisfilm. They start with three Trailers: Darkness Falls (2 mins, 16:9),Anger Management (90 seconds, 16:9) andxXx (1 minute,somewhere between 16:9 and the original 2.35:1),two featurettes, one straight-forward ‘making of’ (17 mins, 16:9) with castand crew trying to justify how incredible it was to make such a pile ofseenitallbefore; and “The Legend of Matilda Dixon”, and how it was inspiredby the happenings around Port Fairy, Australia (11 mins, 4:3).
There are Four Storyboard Comparisons (6 mins), each showing clips and howthey were originally sketched out, 7 Deleted Scenes (9½ mins, 2.35:1 non-anamorphic)and Two audio commentaries, one from the filmmakers and one from thewriters.
The menus are all static and silent, there are 28 chapters which is fine forsuch a short film and there are subtitles in English, Spanish, Dutch,Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Russian,Serbian, Slovenian, TurkishDid they really need so many?
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.