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The Dark is Rising
Susan Cooper's popular children's fantasy novels finally get a big screen adaptation, some 30 years after they first appeared in print. Undoubtedly the producers have an eye on the success of The Lord Of The Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Master H. Potter, Esquire. Unlike those successful franchises, however, The Dark Is Rising has offended fans of the books by making sweeping changes to the story and the characters, most obviously by changing hero Will from an 11-year-old English boy to a 13-year-old American whose large family has recently moved to these shores. (Let's leave aside the fact that it was filmed in Romania, shall we?) According to screenwriter John Hodge (Trainspotting) this was a voluntary change, in part to put some distance between Will and Harry, and in part to make the character more of an outsider. Will in the books is too passive a figure, he says. Make of that what you Will. In principal, I'm all for screenwriters making the adaptation their own. A movie has a different rhythm to a book, and great prose doesn't automatically translate into imagery. Taken on its own terms as a film, The Dark Is Rising has plusses and minuses, but it's certainly not in the Potter class. 
Here's how the story goes: the sixth son (so far as he knows) of a physicist who has recently moved his family over to an olde English village, Will (Alexander Ludwig) begins to notice some supernatural weirdness encroaching on his normally humdrum life. At first he blanks it out. But when he buys a necklace as a Christmas present for his younger sister and the security guards at the shopping centre turn into monsters and try to snatch it, well, that's a tough one to explain away. Things get stranger when he's accosted by the butler, Merriman (Ian McShane) at a Christmas cocktail party thrown by Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy). He runs outside, only to come face to face with a menacing medieval knight on a charger: the Rider (Christopher Eccleston). Merriman and Miss Greythorne save him just in time. They explain that is his destiny to vanquish the forces of darkness by collecting six signs, talismans that exist about the village in different time zones. He must collect these signs or light will be banished from the world - and he only has a couple of days to do it. 
These junior labours of Hercules boil down to an archaeological scavenger hunt, with the Rider and his cohorts threatening much but delivering little in the way of real harm. Predictable and repetitive, with Eccleston struggling with the worst of the dialogue as the continually thwarted villain (he reminded of Dastardly in the Wacky Racers cartoons), the story really only serves as a platform for special effects set pieces. These are hit and miss, but these come with enough regularity to keep younger teens and preteens happy. (Under tens may find it too scary.) I liked the moment when Will set fire to an ancient windmill to express his adolescent rage. And the climactic deep freeze has a certain chilly beauty. Ludwig is a decent actor and handles himself with enough dignity to make you forgive his nationality (he's actually Canadian), and Ian McShane makes for an agreeably gruff mentor. But there isn't enough for his immortal comrades the Old Ones to do, and after a breezy start Will's family life is all a bit perfunctory. Perhaps that's the price you pay for a tight 94 minute running time. But it does leave this moderately engaging juvenile fantasy film feeling a bit like a quick cash-in riding on the back of bigger, better series. Tom Charity 
More information about The Dark is Rising » Critics' Reviews
Another 14-year-old boy discovers the future of humanity depends on his magical powers in this over-familiar fantasy... read more on www.timeout.com Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
Trevor Johnston, Time Out