Good God in heaven, and I thought Dragon Wars was bad.
That late-term abortion of a film at least attempted to follow its own internal storytelling logic...no matter that it was a type of bashed in the noggin', can't think straight anymore and now drools a bit logic...but it tried to follow it, nonetheless.
The just-opened The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, which is based so loosely on the novel by English author Susan Cooper that it should have a disclaimer pasted directly under its title, not only strays from that beloved book, but also from the path of simple storytelling sense as well. This movie is suckalicious in virtually every cliched aspect which unspools for the(thankfully) brief 93 minutes it runs. As a film reviewer, I wanted to cry at the lack of cohesiveness and abundant contradictions which run throughout the story. If I were to even attempt to list all the ways in which this movie diverges from Ms. Cooper's book, I'd never be able to finish this review. Never. As it is, let's get going so that it can be done and I can put this thing behind me.
First of all, The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising is actually the second of Cooper's novels which deal with the eternal battle between The Light and The Dark forces which seek to set humankind free or subject it to an eternity of misery. Being set in England, they are rich in such locales and steeped mainly in Arthurian legend. The central character, Will Stanton, actually is not introduced until the second book, the first focusing on the Drew siblings, Simon, Jane and Barney. For the benefit of us poor ol' dumb Americans, co-producing companies 20th Century Fox and Walden Media have chosen to begin their proposed series with what they must have believed would be the easier book to comprehend(duuuuh, thanks!).
They have also changed Will from an eleven year-old Eng-lish lad to a typical angsty American fourteen year-old. However, they've been gracious enough to allow the story to remain in England...while filming the entirety of the movie in Bucharest, Romania! Is Romania the new Canada for England? Was Dracula brought on as a technical consultant or something? Even at the beginning of the film--and having visited England--I could tell this story wasn't taking place in a legitimate English town. When will production companies learn the lesson: if you want authenticity, then shoot the film where the script says it
takes place! This is one of the many reasons why The Kingdom worked so well!
From the outset, when The Dark Is Rising fans heard the film adaptation would be helmed by David L. Cunningham(son of the founder of the unaccredited University of the Nations school and director of the controversial The Path To 9/11), they were concerned that all references to the Arthurian legend, along with the series' use of the three types of magic--Old Magic, Wild Magic and High Magic--would be completely excised. The fans were correct to be worried. I can't honestly say if screenwriter John Hodge(Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) included those refer-ences or not--although he has gone on record in reference to the books as saying "I didn't really think it was for me"--but if he had, then Cunningham has indeed totally eviscerated them from the script.
The story begins with our introduction to Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) as he's on his way home from school. He is accompanied by four of his six siblings(family of nine; mom, dad, six boys and little sis) when he sees a beautiful young girl on a bus who appears to be flirting with him. His brothers tell Will she's out of his league, while his sister Gwen(Emma Lockhart, an underutilized adorable child who is one of the only tolerable things in this movie) tries to encourage him. The girl gets off the bus and Will misses his chance. This entire introductory scene is sloppily handled, and if it weren't for the fact we see the kids are riding on a bus in the "English countryside", one would never know the story is set in England. On their way home, Will and the others are given passes to a Christmas party at the Greythorne mansion by Merriman Lyon(Ian McShane), a driver for the reclusive yet somehow well known wealthy lady.
Will and the kids arrive home to parents John(John Benja-min Hickey) and Mary(Wendy Crewson). It turns out John is a physics professor and the entire family has been transplanted to England so he could take a job at the local university. Will is displaced from his own room by the arrival of big brother Max (Gregory Smith) who has a secret he's keeping from his folks. So in addition to not being able to talk to a girl, Will is also forced to sleep in the nice, cold attic. While this may seem a bit derivative of Harry Potter, keep in mind that J.K. Rowling's books came nearly 40 years after Cooper's. While there is nothing new to be told in the story of a boy learning to take responsibility for the fate of the world(whether dealing with magic or the real world, the moral of the story is the same), whatever flair which existed in the books is brutally smushed out by Cunningham's ham-fisted direction.
Before the trip to the mansion, Will goes Christmas shopp-ing and picks up a stone necklace for his kid sis. Two mall guards stop him, accusing him of stealing, and bring him to a semi-darkened holding room. As they argue back and forth and the neon light overhead flickers, it is revealed these men are not what they seem. Although both the dialogue and the scene itself are directly ripped off from the first Matrix film, this is one of the only genuinely effective scenes in the entire movie, as the guards transform into a murder of crows and fly after Will, chasing him down the corridor until he just barely manages to escape back into the open mall.
Later, at the Greythorne mansion--accessible only by bridge at the end of town--Will is briefly introduced to two of the town workers, Old George(Jim Piddock) and Dawson(James Cosmo). He also sees the girl from the bus again, but before Will can bust a move, yet another big brother of his, James(Drew Tyler Bell) snatches her up. Disheartened, Will leaves the party only to encounter a being on horseback known only as The Rider, played by Christopher Eccleston.
And now comes The Great Sadness: Christopher Eccleston is a damn good actor who, much like Jennifer Connelly in 2003's abysmal Hulk, deserved a far better movie to be showcased in. Eccleston played DCI David Bilborough in the British tv series Cracker, and knows how to carry himself onscreen. But with such lackluster, well-trodden dialogue shoved into his mouth, it's a wonder he didn't go home after the first day of shooting and--as the English say--"top" himself.
The Rider is an agent of The Dark, which seeks to plunge the world into eternal night and misery. He is stopped from harming Will by Merriman, Greythorne, Dawson and Old George. It turns out they are known as Old Ones, who serve The Light and seek to keep humankind safe. Merriman reveals to Will that being the seventh son of a seventh son(and with apologies to Ms. Cooper, I wish people would stop using that storytelling crutch as the cop-out reasoning to explain why their central characters are so special), he is in possession of certain powers: the ability to summon great strength, the ability to com-mand fire and most importantly, the ability to travel through time. Director Cunningham takes special care to never call Will's gifts "magic", but "powers". Indeed, he makes certain the word "magic" is never used in the film, when it is so obvious that only magic could explain the events which transpire within the story! Also in the Dark books, Merriman is supposed to be none other than Merlin himself, yet Cunningham avoids this major plot point entirely. It makes one wonder how well Harry Potter would have fared in Cunningham's clutches, had he only been gifted with "abilities".
Will is what is known as a Seeker, a chosen protector of humanity, who must find six items of power within a limit of five days. These items of power, once united, will give him the ability to defeat The Dark until the end of the chosen 500 year cycle, when the dance will start anew. If Will doesn't complete his task within those five days however, The Rider will reach his full strength and his power will drag the world down into darkness. It turns out also that the girl big brother James snagged up is named Maggie(Amelia Warner), and she is a witch assigned by Merriman and the others to protect Will. It's a strange thing, though...Maggie never has any interaction whatsoever with Merriman or any of the other Old Ones, yet she is critical to the plot on several levels, one of them a fairly large turn toward the last third of the picture.
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising suffers not only from Cunningham's low-rent direction, but also from cinematographer Joel Ransom's(The X-Files tv series, the upcoming Aliens vs.
Predator: Requiem) overuse of tilting angles and slow motion, which serve not to heighten the tension or what little action there is, but to annoy and disorient the viewer to no end. The actors acquit themselves as well as can be expected, given the shallowness of their characters as written. Eccleston himself seems to derive some small joy from playing a type of evil Clark Kent, as The Rider masquerades behind glasses and a tweed suit as the local doctor who comes to visit Will after he twists his ankle and offers him an allegiance on the side of evil.
Yet the story seems almost to look upon itself in a mirror and yell "Screw you!" at its own internal logic. The Rider can't cross the bridge to Greythorne mansion, yet his powers can extend into it to bring harm to others. Will travels through time with no disorientation and neither a sense of wonder or amazement, and little sis Gwen takes it all in stride after accompanying him on one of his jaunts. On at least two occasions, Will seems to forget all about his special abilities and reacts in fear when he should be pummeling the living hell out of his opponents. His family is present at Greythorne mansion when The Rider's crows begin attacking in the middle of a blizzard that is being felt around the world--with water flowing into the mansion in an attempt to drown them all and a supposed ally turning into a mystical enemy right in front of them--yet none of these dim-bulbs takes notice that something odd might be going on! And following the secret origin of Will's birth, if anyone can't guess what the happy-sappy ending will be, they need to stop going to the movies altogether, because it might just be safer at that point to stay home.
In fact, it might be better if everyone stayed home from this one. By releasing a film with such cliched dialogue, writing which veers so far away from its source material that the picture should have a different name altogehter, horrendous cinema-tography and as badly directed as The Seeker: The Dark Is
Rising, Twentieth Century Fox convinced me The Dark has already won.
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
The signs are clear:
Stay Away!
Which will rise faster: The Dark, or the bile in your throat, if you see this movie? The race is on!
"Don't worry...it's perfectly safe for someone your age to walk with two old strangers out in the countryside like this! By the way, ever watch gladiator movies?"
Look up the word "strumpet" in the Oxford Dictionary, and this is the picture you'll see.
"I'm a bad man! See my serrated sword? That means I'm bad, baby! You wanna mess with this? That's right, I bet you don't!"
"Man! It sure got cold and frosty in here, all of a sudden!"
"It's just the audience's reaction to the film, kid...nothing we can do about it."
"Amazing--! I've thrown the script into the fire a dozen times, and it just won't burn! It truly is from hell!"
"Don't pay any attention to those jeering audience members and critics, Alex! Just because we're in this movie does not make us 'losers'!"
"Help! Does anyone in the audience know how to get out of this movie? Anybody there? Helllooooo--!"
