"Darkness": not particularly terrible, not particularly good, just unimpressive. I guess I got hooked on Anna Paquin after seeing "X Men." Two hours of Anna can't be all bad. Actually the more I've seen of her the less interested I have become, but at the time I picked up "Darkness" I thought she appeared to be a cute and promising actor. Wanting to check her out in roles other than Rogue and having read several reviews about the great, unusual ending here I picked up the movie (on sale, of course, 'cause that's how I role).

Maybe I expected too much out of it after those comments, because I found the unusual ending as unimpressive as the rest of the movie. Is it an unusual twist? Sure, but unusual is not necessarily in and of itself a good thing.

Mom, Dad, daughter, and son move to a new house. Dad starts going crazy and son starts getting creepy. Mom and daughter don't get along, and daughter is the only one suspicious of the true nature of what is going on, or at least the only one sane and brave enough to investigate it. As she and her boyfriend dig they uncover a sinister plot and must find a way to stop it.

Here is why I have problems with the movie. The characters are absolutely too unbelievable. The ones that are evil have poor explanations of motives. There's no purpose behind what they do. The people that are good, or at least innocent where the supernatural horrors are concerned, do not react naturally to the events around them and express no reasons for acting the way they do. The mother, for instance, is either afraid to face what is happening or so self-absorbed that she doesn't see it. I've never been quite clear what her malfunction is which makes her scenes feel forced and stiff.

This inadequacy is a combination of acting and writing. None of the acting is impressive enough to compensate for the weaknesses in the characterizations (including Anna, so you see I'm not partial). It further hurts the overall story and doesn't convey the danger that the movie needs to be effective.

The story feels very choppy which again is partially due to the writing, but also a result of poor editing. Perhaps if the characters were more gripping then the jumpy style would have worked better. There are two major ways in which this hurts the movie. One is all the short, meaningless scenes that pop up every now and again. The other is building suspense for a scene then cutting suddenly to the next day without any fulfillment of the anticipation. That is a dangerous trick to play on the viewer and hurts the flow of the story.

The frightening elements of the story provide some creepy moments, but none of them live up to their full potential. Flashes of ghostly kids here and there are subtle enough to really dig in to the imagination. These are some of the best moments. Unfortunately after they show up a couple of times they are pretty much discarded. Their connection to the plot is established, but no further explanation is offered. Are they pawns of the evil, corrupted to be part of the evil, or just semi-impartial (perhaps jealous of the living) observers? They're just there.

There's a  creature from a photo that is quite good, but once again it's a part of a couple of brief scenes then forgotten. What's the significance of the picture and the people in it? What's the point in something coming out of it to terrorize people? How come the others don't pop out as well? There is no connection to the plot on this one.

The ritual, workings of the supernatural, purpose of the "entity," the lame "illness" the father supposedly has, and other elements are touched on but poorly conceived. It's as little depth as possible to put the characters in the peculiar peril that plagues them. The supernatural elements with a better depiction of family life would have been an improvement on the story as a whole. Elimination of the father's illness and more knowledge of occult rituals would have greatly improved the story.