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As per title, Darkness is about, well, darkness. Really, really evil darkness that descends on Earth every 40 years or so during an eclipse to do something really, um, dark, and ultimately utterly incomprehensible. This time, the darkness descends on a family living in a Weird House possibly designed by Satanists, or something like that—beats me. The house is a few miles from a Madrid where it always rains so that director Jaume Balagueró can cop Ringu’s scary-water atmospherics. Dad (Iain Glen) suffers from seizures that randomly cause him to become violent in a The Shining subplot, to the discomfort of Mom (Lena Olin), daughter Regina (Anna Paquin), and wee son Paul (Stephan Enquist), who sees—yep—dead people. Kudos to the marketing folks at Dimension for seeing quick holiday movie counterprogramming bucks in redistributing this fright-free 2002 scare film purée before it quickly returns to the cinematic abyss from whence it came.

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