It's the Whole Tooth
In the town of Darkness Falls children talk of the legend of the Tooth Fairy, an evil spirit which shows up on the night you lose your last baby tooth and if you peek when she enters your room she kills you with only light protecting you from her. When Kyle lost his last baby tooth the tooth fairy came for him except he survived and his mother was killed with no one other than his friend Caitlin believing him when he said it was the Tooth Fairy. Many years later having abandoned the town he gets a call from Caitlin as her little brother is going through what Kyle did having become terrified of the dark and she wants Kyle's help to help her brother something which is not easy for Kyle as he is still plagued by the Tooth Fairy whilst there are those in the town who think he is a dangerous weirdo.
As a child one of my favourite horror movies was "IT" that two part TV mini-series which featured a group of adults who returned home to their childhood town to deal with an evil clown who every 30 years appears and children disappear. Well before the first 20 minutes of "Darkness Falls" had finished I couldn't stop thinking about the similarity as we have Kyle returning to his hometown to deal with the evil spirit which tormented his childhood and now threatens to do that to a friend's kid brother. Okay so "Darkness Falls" isn't identical but it shares some similarities with not only "IT" but a few other horror movies.
The thing is that I don't mind similar movies and so whilst in many ways there was a level of predictability about "Darkness Falls" not only when it comes to Kyle dealing with the Tooth Fairy but also when it comes to feelings between him and Caitlin the movie works on an average level. Some of that is down to the back story in creating the legend of the Tooth Fairy, this tale of a woman a century and a half earlier wrongly murdered when two children disappeared. But it is also down to director Jonathan Liebesman's solid but unfussy direction as there is no over the top artistic flare to this, just solid horror movie story telling, a typical Friday night horror movie.
What this all boils down to is that "Darkness Falls" is just a typical horror movie; it has a typical story, typical acting as well as typical direction which this much typical makes it predictable. But truth be told there is something to be said for uncomplicated cinema and that is what this is.
