I recently was given access to HBO in order to watch the final season of Game of Thrones. Yesterday, I was perusing around on the app and found a movie titled “Down a Dark Hall.” I took a peep at the preview and thought to give it a chance. I’m honestly not really pleased with horror selection on HBO but the preview seemed promising so I watched it.
is a movie based on a novel by the same name written by Lois Duncan. It was directed by Rodrigo Cortez with the screenplay written by Mike Goldbach and Chris Sparling. The movie stars AnnaSophia Robb as Kit Gordy, a troubled teenager after the death of her father at a young age. After a failed attempt to burn her school down, she gets expelled from school and is sent Blackwood Boarding School, an old, dark victorian mansion isolated in the middle of the woods. There she meets four other troubled teens and the mysterious headmistress of Blackwood, Ms. Duret played by Uma Thurman.
The trailer spoke of promises of everything I love, creepy victorian scenery, slow moving scenes ending in jump scares, creepy poltergeist activities and mysterious motives from the staff. I had the impression that there was going to be some kind of evil witchcraft or demonic energy involved so I watched in anticipation of a good, creepy movie. I will say, this movie did not deliver such expectations and ended up being just “meh”.
Where do I begin? The plot was extremely underdeveloped. Nothing was explained aside from the actual motive of the headmistress to give deceased artists, writers, mathematicians and musicians a vessel to continue the work that was cut short by their untimely deaths. Such a cool idea wasted on 96 minutes of nothing. There were creepy, slow moving scenes alright but one jump scare the entire film and in the most obvious scene with a jump scare. Some of the scenes took place in areas that made no sense in relation to the house they used to film. And literally nothing was explained. One of the characters, Ashley, was channeling a famous female poet named Victoria. Around the middle of the movie Ashley begins to mention a man who has replaced Victoria and is evil with evil intentions. This character is never developed more than popping up in a few other scenes. Aside from that, nothing in this movie indicates who he is. Madame Duret mentions that once you open the door, you can’t control what comes in. So apparently they had been dealing with this half burned man for a while in order to continue their project. But if she knew about him then there must be something to know about. So the question still stands…WHO THE HELL IS HE?
On top of the mysterious evil half burned man, there are many other scenes that make absolutely no sense. The scene where Kit and Veronica go into the locked portion of the house to find all the past student records. Madame Duret shows up and Veronica takes the fall. During the whole scene you see spirits tucked away in the shadows watching their every move. It wasn’t until the end, when Madame Duret shows up and “gives” Veronica to “them”, when the lurking spirits finally strike. These same spirits show up in a couple more scenes. It would have been nice to know who these spirits were. Why did they not act until Madame Duret instructed them? What did they actually do to Veronica? Kit ends up going back and finding Veronica chained up and seemingly possessed by a demon or something. After an intense battle, Kit yells at Veronica to fight it and somehow the demon possessing her exits her body. HOW? Everything we know about demon possessions from a hollywood standpoint screams impossible when it comes to this scene. What did those spirits do to Veronica and why didn’t they do the same to Kit when she was up there rescuing her?
There was just too many scenes that didn’t make any sense or were severely underdeveloped story line for me to enjoy this horror film. The ratings for this movie weren’t that great, receiving 5.2 out of 10 from IMDB, 50% from Rotten Tomatoes and a 56 from Metacritic. I’d have to agree with those ratings. The story is such a good one and they could’ve done so much more to make this movie a hit but in the end, it came up lacking. By the end I was happy to see the credits and I probably won’t watch it again. I would, however, read the book because I would like to hope that Lois Duncan provided an actual story that makes sense and hollywood, once again, watered it down to make it a movie.
Until next time ghouls
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